We're all mommies too!

Every year, women like me brace themselves for the coming weekend, the 2nd Sunday of May. Yes, Mothers Day, celebrated almost all over the world, and dreaded by the IF community. The commercialization of every holiday and the all-pervasive media with all its advertising and constant reminders of the celebration of motherhood, become constant reminders of what we’re missing. Every commercial on TV, every advertisement on the radio, every announcement of Mother’s Day sales all over the place are like knives through our already broken and shattered hearts.

And I think I speak for many of my IF sisters here – I have endured each Mother’s Day for the last 8 years, thinking, believing, hoping, praying, while desperately and fervently wishing that this is the last Mother’s Day that is breaking my heart. Next year, I will have my little baby in my arms, and I too will be wished “Happy Mother’s Day!” For 8 years I have pretended to ignore the commercials and the announcements, and have wondered how it would feel to wake up on Mother’s Day to breakfast that my child(ren) made for me, to clumsy but heart tuggingly cute hand made cards, smudged drawings, and squeals of laughter, all the excitement in the air!

But instead here I am – hoping to go to bed on Saturday night, only to wake up on Monday morning. Hoping to slink away somewhere on Sunday, to try and avoid the obvious. And it’s all because we physically don’t have our children in our homes and in our arms.

The other day I saw a Mother’s Day commercial on TV, and I turned to DH and said “ I’m a mommy too, aren’t I? So what if my babies are all dead?” I know it broke his heart to just hear that being said out loud. But isn’t that the truth?

Our babies may not be here in flesh and blood, but they are here in so many other forms:

In the form of every dream that we have had where we’ve seen our babies’ faces, or felt their hugs.
In the form of the imagination of what our babies would look like – for every time that we have looked at our DH’s face, and imagined a baby with those eyes, or that smile.
In the form of every treatment cycle that we have gone through – and the 2ww when we are PUPO
In the form every embryo that we have ever created through ART
Sadly, even in the form of every chemical pregnancy, every miscarriage, every ectopic or every pregnancy gone wrong – those were our babies. They just grew angel wings way before they should have.

We are all Mommies. The world may celebrate Mother’s Day only for those with living babies, but let’s not forget to remember our babies that were, or could be, or should have been. We are all Mommies, whether or not we have babies to cuddle and kiss.

I hope I don’t offend any of you by saying this, but I do want to wish all of us a Happy Mother's Day. Many many hugs to all my IF sisters, and many thanks to all of you for holding my hand through some of the roughest days of my life so far.