Six years ago I celebrated my first Mother’s Day.
It was a quiet celebration. Very few even knew I was a mother, but just two days before I had taken a pregnancy test and it was positive!
I was so excited. “I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.” It was all I could think about. Every single thing I did was different. Eating was different, sleeping was different, I think I even walked differently.
My heart was bursting with joy and love, I started imagining the future, circling the due date on my calendar: January 29th.
My best friend secretly slipped me a little Mother’s Day card at church. My mother in law gave me a beautiful precious moment’s statue of a pregnant mother and an embroidered handkerchief. My husband even wrote me a Mother’s Day card from ‘the baby’.
Four weeks later the bleeding started.
Faint at first, just a little spotting.
I scoured the internet, trying to figure out what could possibly be happening. I called my mom in tears. She tried to reassure me to calm down and be patient.
After a day it got heavier. The cramping started. I knew.
I remember grabbing the Mother’s Day gifts I had been so thrilled to receive and throw them in the bottom of a drawer. I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t feel like I had earned them. I felt afraid that I never would be a “real mother”.
I wish I could go back to Vanessa of 2009 and dig those gifts back out of the drawer and tell her: “You ARE a mother. You had a life inside of you. You loved that life and did your best to nurture and protect it. You ARE a mother.”
I’ll never forget my first Mother’s Day or the baby who first made me a mother. I hope to meet my first baby someday and tell him/her how very much he/she was loved.
What a beautiful post. My heart aches today for those who have lost babies and those who have been unable to have babies.
That little one is in heaven waiting for you and loving you from above 🙂
Happy Mother’s Day dear <3