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Fourth of July stories are supposed to be about how we Americans had a great time celebrating Independence Day in some special way. By the time Fourth of July arrived one year, I felt lucky just to be alive.

It was almost a month to the day that I had given birth to our first child, when July Fourth rolled around. Everything went great with the actual birth, but nine days after giving birth I almost died.

Not wanting to go into the entire sorted story, I had major complications nine days after, and several weeks later it was right around July 4th I started feeling human again. My husband being the awesome guy that he is took our new baby and I to his parents' home for July 4th festivities. It wasn't an easy task because we had to load up the car with everything baby and I was still pretty messed up emotionally.

My husband's family was terrific, they took care of my new baby all day, and they let me sit back and relax. We ate standard Fourth of July picnic fare that day at my in-laws home, hot dogs, and corn on the cob, beans, and potato salad. The kids played baseball and badminton in the backyard. That evening we blew off some fireworks, and the kids ran around with their sparklers, and had a great time.

Driving home that night, we watched fireworks going off, as my husband and I sat at the top of a hill and watched the fireworks in the country being blown off everywhere we could look. Our newborn baby was sound asleep in the back seat, so he didn't see anything, and wouldn't have known what anything was anyways.

When we got home, the baby woke up and wanted to eat. As I was putting him in the crook of my arm he did the most amazing thing, he smiled at me for the first time. I cried, while my husband kept asking me what was wrong. It was then that I realized how truly lucky I was to have this wonderful child, and that I was still alive to be there with my family. And all this on my son's first Fourth of July.

Learn more about this author, Kate Johns.
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