Mother's Day Thoughts

Mother's Day is a day where I feel all the feelings.  

Love for my mom, man she is the best!  She's smart, funny, beautiful, and brave. 

Love for my grandma.  She was a big influence on my life.

Love for all the great women in my life.  So mostly it's a day to love the women in my life.  But then there is another side.

The years I desperately longed to be a mother. 

The years in the thick of fertility treatments where logic and rational thought were drowned out by higher than normal hormones.

The year we lost our baby.

The years after we lost our baby.  The first year I allowed myself to be sad and boy I took it to the extreme.  But that loss was heavy on my heart and so fresh.  The second year was better.  I allowed myself the sadness but not the feeling sorry for myself part. 

This mother's day was the third mother's day with no baby - on this side of Heaven.  And you know what?  I was more okay than I thought I would be.  I was sad, I made sure to not go to the service with six baby dedications at church.  But I was okay.

I had a lot of fun with a friend for lunch who looks at Mother's Day like it's her Cinderella day where she gets to do what she wants.  Love!  Then another friend joined us to do the tour of homes. It's where you go look at big fancy houses none of us would ever really want because who's cleaning that thing?  Then dinner with Matt's side of the family, playing Candy Land and teaching Oakley and Sawyer how to play Crazy 8's.  Fun, fun, fun.

There has been so much more openness about infertility and pregnancy loss in the last few years.  Am I just more aware of it because I live it or is it actually more out there?  I'm not sure.  I am grateful though.  I lost count of the posts from various friends and bloggers about ways to make mother's day not so hard for those of us in the trenches.  My favorite comes from The Carry Camp.  Man, those ladies are such blessings.  I'm so thankful they listened when God put the idea of a ministry to women dealing with infertility in their hearts.  I hope I can make the retreat this year.  I'd love to give them all a big hug of gratitude.

So, if you are in the thick of fertility treatments.  If you have suffered a pregnancy loss.  It never goes away, ever.  It will be a part of you and your story forever.  But it does get better.  When you can look back and see all that God has done, is doing, and will do in your life you can breathe again. 

You can get out of bed on Mother's Day.