It's Christmas Eve. A year ago I was pregnant and waiting for my husband to come home and spend Christmas Day with us; a new family. A year ago I wasn't even supposed to be able to get pregnant. I very nearly lost my baby, both in pregnancy and after in those first stunning weeks in the NICU.

Miracles happen at Christmas. I was sitting in church this afternoon holding my wiggly little girl on my lap and I started crying. She's so happy and healthy and perfect, and her warm little head tucked up under my chin made me grateful and aware what a miracle she really is.

All the odds stacked against us- one functioning ovary, a stunted uterus that was drastically although not obviously affected by radiation treatments decades ago, malfunctioning hormones that misfired over and over again. The whatever it is that made my mother's and her sister's pregnancies so risky and nearly cost their lives and sanities. Offset that with my husband's military career that made medical treatment available to me. That ensured proper and above-average prenatal care. Which led to them finding my pre-eclampsia before I had a seizure and the fetal distress before we lost the baby. The level 3 NICU where my baby was nurtured to term.

I shouldn't be alive, and neither should she, and tonight I am counting all of my blessings that we have many years ahead of us.