Sorry for my blogging absence this last couple of weeks. I have several posts to type to fill you all in. But today, I want to focus this post on Mother's Day and how I am feeling about it. This will be a long one because I am feeling quite emotional.
And Mom - if you are reading this - please read the whole thing - no matter how long winded it is.
Over the last 7 years of my life, Mother's Day morphed for me - just as it does for almost all infertiles.
Way back in 2004 (at the start of our journey), it was a day to celebrate my Mom and Derek's Mom and all that they meant to us. And that first year, it was a day that I felt hope - we were newly married and we had been discussing beginning to start a family. We actually thought that we could plan for when we would become parents. We had decided that I would stop my birth control and we would officially start trying the next month. We wanted to have our first child after we had been married for 2 years and we were giving ourselves a 6 month cushion just in case it didn't work the first time. (And, yes, as I typed that, I heard the universe laugh loudly in my head...)
By Mother's Day in 2007, I had grown concerned as to why it hadn't happened for us yet. My OB didn't seem too worried about why it was taking us so long. I had reasoned to myself that Derek had been travelling a lot for work and perhaps we were just missing the right day to procreate, but the fear that I couldn't have a baby was already deeply rooted even if I didn't share it aloud. That was before I found an online community of support and I was still suffering in silence. None of my friends had struggled to have children and I felt so all alone. Desperately alone. Mother's Day was still a day I celebrated, but I no longer celebrated Mother's Day with my whole heart. The first pangs of sadness floated in.
I think that Mother's Day 2008 was the beginning of the big downward, slippery slope in my feelings towards Mother's Day. We had completed our first rounds of testing and were still considered unexplained infertility, but we knew that everything appeared to be working correctly. We had finally seen "PREGNANT" on a HPT and the result was confirmed by my OB's office. But, just a week and a half after finding out we were expecting the most beautiful gift in the world, I had a miscarraige. Derek and my Dad had installed several new doors on our house the day that I lost the baby - and they were working on the french doors in the basement when I went to get Derek to get him to take me to the hospital. That Mother's Day (and every one thereafter), I would go down to the basement to look at those doors and I would cry as I mourned the child that could have been but wasn't. I remember not wanting to celebrate AT ALL.
In 2009, we had completed more testing and had several failed IUIs . We had experienced our first failed IVF and we now knew that our embryos had fragmentation. My heart was crushed. I can't remember if I even sent cards to my Mom or to Derek's Mom but I am pretty sure I did because it was something I felt as if I had to do. And since I am being utterly honest in this post - I have to share that even though I had found a wonderful group of women online who were also suffering - I still felt utterly alone. I was the only one in our group who had gone through IVF and failed. And all of my online friends were getting pregnant left and right. This was the first Mother's Day that I truly wanted to completely forget.
And what I remember is how crushed my own Mother was that I didn't want to celebrate HER. And how she couldn't even grasp the concept of why I felt this way.
In 2010, I had think I had abandoned all REAL hope of every becoming a mother. Although there were treatment options still available, we had decided that we didn't want to invest our life savings into donor eggs. Although we loved the idea of embryo adoption, we felt like the cost to pursue this option was so close to the "base price" of adoption. So, we had decided to pursue domestic adoption. But the truth of the matter was that we felt trapped by our lives and we wanted out. Since we were attempting an exit strategy, we weren't moving forward with adoption. AT ALL. And I knew that our next "life" would not be as financially stable as our current one. I wasn't sure where we would come up with the funds for adoption once we made these big life changes. I had begun to feel as if we would always remain childless and I was trying to prepare myself for a lifetime without children.
Remembering the way my Mom felt the previous year, I did my best to push my feelings away and celebrate Mother's Day with her. Of course, I failed miserably. I postponed making plans with her because I didn't want to dread it for weeks in advance. And (once again, being brutally honest) I only called to make plans with her because my best friend convinced me that it was the right thing to do - I shouldn't hurt my own Mom just because I was dying inside. But, because I had hurt her so badly the previous year and because I procrastinated, she made other plans with her sister.
I can only imagine how she felt those last 2 Mother's Days - and I really don't want to
because it makes me feel like an absolute asshole even to this day. What I wish I could have eloquently explained to my Mom back then? As an infertile, just getting through a regular day can be tough enough. But the holildays? Those suckers are BRUTAL. And Mother's Day is especially so. It is the day that celebrates everything you want to be but are afraid you will never achieve. I can now look back and see that I was battling depression on a day to day basis. There were days that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other or get out of bed. My heart broke
every time I saw a pregnant belly or a child that is the age any of mine would have been. A simple trip to the grocery store could be enough to make me break into tears, so trips to the park and baby showers and many other normal life events made me wish that someone was pulling my fingernails out instead. And a day that celebrates Motherhood? Well, I would have taken any other form of torture to have avoided the day entirely. The commercials alone could send me over the edge. I distinctly remember standing in the card aisle trying to pick cards for my Mom and Derek's Mom and breaking into tears and then running to the bathroom to sit in the stall and sob. (I am sure the other shoppers at Target thought I was absolutely nuts).
This year, things are different. I haven't gotten the cards out in time, but this time it was due to my hectic schedule and not procrastination. I still cried when I stood there picking out the cards, but this time it was because the words in the cards meant so much more to me. And when my Mom (finally) gets the card that I picked out for her, I think she will know that and she will cry too. Because what it says is THAT perfect for how I feel. And even though I can't spend Mother's Day with her because of the miles that separate us, I hope that she enjoys the gift she will receive today. And I hope she knows that, being on the verge of finally becoming a Mother myself, I find myself finally want to truly celebrate my own Mom again. I found myself wanting to make this day special for her - out of love and not obligation.
And as I have sat here this morning, quietly reflecting on the Mother's Days for the last 7 years of my life, I have cried quite a bit as I have remembered this evolution of feelings. It was so much easier to write them now I feel my son moving inside of me and I don't feel hopeless. My heart has healed and I am no longer in the depths of the black hole that was my infertility. I can still remember the emotions, but they aren't so raw and fresh.
And today, as I more fully understand a Mother's love, I know my Mom will forgive me for how much I hurt her these last few years with my attitude towards this holiday. I only hope that she will understand my feelings and will someday know it was never because I didn't love her - only because I was in so much pain myself.
I don't know if anyone who hasn't suffered from infertility can understand just how different Mother's Day feels to you when you are no longer in the trenches fighting to survive. So, to my friends still waiting for their miracles - my thoughts are with you today. I remember and I have cried many tears for you this morning. I promise that some day, every tear you have cried and all of the pain you have felt will be worth it.
