Bereaved Mother's Day

The first Sunday in May is the International Bereaved Mother's Day.  A day you just don't really even know about unless you have lived through some sort of trauma related to being a mother.  For us, that trauma just seems to keep piling up.

There have been so many Mother's Days over the years when it has been a struggle to even get out of a bed.  So many years of longing to be a mother and being barren, years of having a day where I wouldn't receive that flower at church, where I had no handmade art or breakfast in bed.  And then, my first "real" Mother's Day, our sweet Reagan was gone and I was hospital bound with the boys, still being told they would not survive.  I'd like to say it got better from there, and to some extent it did, but the scar of those early years in our marriage certainly never left.  But, between last year and now, I have lost 9 babies.  This time last year, I was pregnant with Lucas and had 8 embryo tucked away in the freezer.  Today??  Well, I have nothing.  No babies to hold, no babies growing inside of me, no babies in the freezer, and no hope of ever carrying one again.  The agony of it all is almost unbearable.  I am broken - my spirit and my body.  I have failed again.

There are few things worse than watching the positive pregnancy line fade into nothing as the days go on.  To have those moments of hope and joy come crashing to a halt.  No matter how many times I told myself "don't go there yet," no matter how many times I repeated the statistics to myself, no matter how much I tried not to get invested, well, I was lying to myself.  I jumped right into this again, like a big stupid idiot, thinking that THIS time would be different, that THIS would be our happy ending, the miracle we had been praying for.  I let myself get swept away in it all.  And I don't know where to go from here.  The idea that I wouldn't have more children never even crossed my mind until a few months ago.  After 5/5 successful transfers, I just assumed the others would work too.

So, I end my journey as a new mother.  A little ironic that it falls on this day.  No more maternity clothes, no more baby gear, no more night feedings.  The last child I will ever birth was our sweet Lucas, and I only got a few short hours with him.  I'm not sure how to do this.  How to keep moving forward when there is just so much pain.  How can any person lose so much and ever be normal again?  How could I have carried 11 babies that I will never get to parent?  So today, on Bereaved Mother's Day, I get to be sad.  I get to cry the big ugly tears on the bathroom floor and let everything fall apart around me.  Today is my day.  Today is about the 11 that are gone.  Because next Sunday, well, next Sunday is really about my living kids, about doing something special with them, about celebrating the 3 we have here.  I have to pull myself together and go on.