Birthdays can be a hard one when you’re divorced. Of course you always want to be with your child on their birthday. You want nothing more than to see the excitement on their faces as they blow out the candles and open their presents; to watch the joy in their faces as they tell everyone that it is their birthday. It is a day they anticipate all year long and you want nothing more than to be able to share that special day with them. When you are divorced you don’t always get that luxury. Those first couple of years can be really difficult for both the child and the parents. In our case my son’s birthday was the first real holiday that we came to after the divorce. It became much more complicated because my son and my ex husband share the same birthday. I tried to put myself in my ex husband’s shoes. I knew that if it were my birthday it would be hard not to be able to see my son, especially when we were still getting into the swing of things. It was then that we first came to the realization of what this divorce really meant for us and Logan. It was the first time that we would have to miss a big event in our son’s life. Luckily things went smoothly and we both were able to spend time with him that day.
Now as my birthday has come around I’ve begun to think about this again. It is Logan’s dad’s day for parent-time and while I’ll have him most of the day still I have thought a lot about how different things would be if we hadn’t gotten divorced. Not having Logan there for things like this was a struggle at first, but I had to change my way of thinking. One of the few benefits for children of divorce is that they get to celebrate twice. It doesn’t really matter which day it is, it only matters that you got to spend time with them to celebrate their special day. In the end, the memories are still made, whether it is on their birthday or the day after.