Mother's Day

As Mother's Day approaches I feel compelled to share. Mother's Day overwhelms me with emotion. Let me bring you back to the Mother's Days of years past. 7 year ago on Mother's Day we were starting to try to have a baby and I was anxious and excited to hopefully become a mother. 6 years ago, Mother's Day got hard. Hard because having a baby biologically was taking a lot longer than we thought it would take. Most people get pregnant in about a year, correct, and believe me I have heard many stories of those who get pregnant in one month- and act as if it was "nothing" to get pregnant. I hadn't though much about infertility until we went through it. The heart break of every month not being pregnant, buying all those fertility test and pregnancy tests and always being let down. Then after you try for a year you start to go to poking and prodding doctor's appointments and try different things they have all laid out in a what seems like 100 step process and expensive process. Well I am thankful that we were given an answer for our infertility and it wasn't just simply "unexplained." The answer that we only had a 3-5% chance of ever having a baby biologically was devastating, however we threw ourselves into adoption shortly before Mother's Day 5 years ago. We were in full adoption swing and matched with a birth mother before Mother's Day 5 years ago. However before Mother's Day came, we found out the match was not going to work. So Mother's Day 5 years ago was close to the most devastating of all Mother's Day. I wanted to be a mom so bad, and so many people were able to have babies SO easily. I remember sitting in church and feeling so alone and so broken. Why do we not have a better support system for those suffering with infertility? My goals someday is to start some sort of infertility support system, because although the pain of infertility is mostly gone for me- it is so real for those going through it. Shortly after Mother's Day 5 years ago, God made me a mother. The gift Aniah's birth mother gave me is more than any gift imaginable. To be a mom IS as I thought it would be- the most amazing of all blessings! I am not a mother who went through pregnancy and childbirth, but a mother who went through an agonizing adoption process and difficult infertility journey and because of another mother's immense pain and anguish I became a mother. MOM is a role I try not to ever take lightly- it is not something that came easily- but was worth every moment and heartache to become. Mother's Day 4 years ago was celebrated as I was FINALLY a MOM, my first Mother's Day I didn't sit in church and weep or want to weep for 3 years. Mother's Day 3 years ago was the worst Mother's Day of all though. Worse than all those Mother's Day wanting to be a mom, was the Mother's Day where we had lost a baby. I type that with some hesitancy, because I know I did not lose a baby as some have lost a baby, but I still feel I lost my first son. We were so connected to him and felt like he was our son, therefore there is a very real loss. Two days before Mother's Day we got a call that changed our lives forever- we were to be parents to an amazing little guy- no we did not meet him, but we didn't need to meet him to love him so dearly. The day before Mother's Day is still so vivid in my mind, our dreams came crashing down, we were not going to be this little guy's parents. Mother's Day 3 years ago was a crushing day with lots of tears and whys. Not sure why we even chose to attend church that day, but it was agonizing. Yes I understood that I was a mom to a beautiful girl and I was so blessed, but I also lost a little boy I loved so dearly. That day was awful, little did we know that our Eden was born on Mother's Day 3 years ago. What a blessing for me to have a baby born on Mother's Day- even though we didn't know about her until the day after- but what a bittersweet day that her birth mother has to go through Mother's Day every year with this memory and with this pain and without a child every year. So I celebrate Mother's Day and know how blessed I am, and what it took for me to become a mother. I celebrate that God has given me two girls that I love so very much. But I also grieve for their birth mother's who probably feel the same way I did 3 years ago, like I lost a child and the weight of the grief of losing a child. How must they feel on a day that is meant to celebrate motherhood? I could not be a mom without these two women and yet I can do very little to ease any of their grief. Being a mom is priceless and blissful (well most of the time :)) but it did not come without heartache and grief. So celebrate Mother's Day but also say a prayer for those so desperately wanting and trying to be mother's who have not been able to, and for birth mother's who gave such a selfless gift and who grieve on that day, and for those who have lost babies- however that loss may have occured.