Last year Mother's Day was extremely difficult for me. In fact, I even stayed in bed and ditched church because I couldn't face them honoring the mothers in attendance - in my mind, I didn't think they'd count me because I don't look the part since my child is missing from the picture. However, this year, I'm not as afraid of it. Perhaps it's because the grief isn't as fresh. Perhaps it's because I have another child visibly growing in my belly for others to see. Perhaps it's both and a mixture of other things. What I do know is that I don't ever want Mother's Day to be sad holiday for me although I know it always has the potential to evoke that feeling when people (knowingly or not) forget to think of me as Hailey's mom on that day.
To help combat that this year I'm trying to focus more on how I view myself rather than caring about how or hoping others view me as a mother. Therefore, I thought I'd write about a couple of motherly topics that I've seen come up in the past few days from a variety of places.
The first one is a cute, brief one taken from the status of a Facebook friend. (I didn't feel comfortable doing this on Facebook, but thought it would be fun and *this* is my safe place so I'll do it here.)
Name: Hailey Marie
Length of pregnancy: 39 weeks
Length of labor: (this is always a hard one for me - details are so fuzzy and when does it technically start?) Induced morning of November 30th & continuing December 1st - water broke naturally (around 1p or 2p?) and what I consider "real" labor began and at 6:04pm Hailey was born
Birth length: 18in
Birth weight: 6lbs
*Repost if you are a proud mommy*
Yet another source asked moms what their favorite part of being a mom is...
And for me, that's a question that has the potential of being very hard to answer as it makes me think of all the things I looked forward to as Hailey's mom but cannot do since she's gone and it's hard to *be* her mom in the present. But I can still answer it, it's just not like most moms might... My favorite part of being a mom was, is, and always will be the love that comes along with it that I never knew existed before... a love outside of yourself... a love that's selfless... a love that I've learned never goes away or dies even if your child does... a love that's indescribable... a love that has expanded me and changed me and who I am forever....
(That's a pic of Hailey in my belly :) )
I have some more motherly thoughts to write about... but I'll save those for another post. But before I go, I can't forget that I'm not just Hailey's mom anymore ... I'm a mom of two... Wow that sounds so strange (and awesome!) to say... But I am myself a mom of two currently... I'll always have Hailey even though she's not with us and I have our son who is with us in my belly... Wow, just have to say it again to myself, I am a mom of two...
All that inducing time, that was labor, I remember the pain you were in. And you get to do it all over again! But look at what you get when your are all done :)
ReplyDeleteThat's what I figured. But that inducing time wasn't pain because I was barely having contractions. It was mostly pain from discomfort of them not allowing me to leave that hospital bed! Who knows what this time will be like :)
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