Monday, May 13, 2013

Cautiously Optimistic

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El Hubster and I got the best news we could have possibly gotten a week ago...we're expecting!! I gotta say I'm in a weird emotional space. I had a few days of astonished happiness and then my anxiety took over. I started to guard myself against the pain I've felt twice before. The "what if's" were in full attack mode and I had no defense.

I've been going back and forth in my mind...trying to be cautiously optimistic and secretly talking with Little P every chance I get. I'm about 4 weeks , 5 days preggers today but I don't feel pregnant. I've read this is the crazymaking time for early pregnancies....that gray area between first finding out and when morning sickness hits. In a weird way, I actually think morning sickness would be comforting because then I would know it was real.

I'm in an ambiguous fog. I so want to start bonding with Little P but I'm so scared that he/she won't stick around and I'll be devastated. This is the curse of infertility and loss. I'm fighting every day to overcome it and trying to find solace in my ravenous hunger (I could eat before but now I can really eat!!), mood swings and exhaustion.

Mother's Day has come and gone and except for scrolling through several annoying Facebook posts, I emerged unscathed. This holiday is not one of my favorites I'll admit. Besides the fact that it's completely manufactured to keep the economy going (I read somewhere that Mother's Day alone is the fifth largest money spending holiday in the billions), It also brings up feelings of loss, sadness and frustration for so many who have yet to become mothers, have recently lost their mothers, were mothers once and are no more, or for women like me who yearn for distant, mentally ill mothers. It's usually a day of mourning for me; mourning the childhood and the mother I didn't have. Mourning past Mother's Days when I would spend weeks thinking of what to do for my mother, what to give my mother, only to get a lukewarm response at best.

And now years later, it brings up thoughts of the mother I have no connection with and the babies that could have been. I'm learning as the years go by that it isn't healthy to hide from pain and past hurts. They are wounds that must be cleaned, irrigated, allowed to breathe and eventually stitched up.

I was so grateful this past Sunday to hear that our Pastor's sermon focused more on healing the hurt from the loss of the mother ideal. In my darkest hours, I truly felt God was punishing me with infertility because I dared to shatter and speak out about my lack of mothering. I've gotten past this notion. It hurt ten times more to keep up the facade than to tell the truth and break free.

I was grateful this past Mother's Day for all the surrogate mothers I've had in my life. My strong grandmother who told me weeks before she died that she firmly believed I would be successful in life, countless teachers who have sensed my mother loss and encouraged me all through my school years and an excellent mother-in-law who I have yet to fully appreciate because I don't know how.

I have to count it all joy because the loss of my own mother has made me a fierce nurturer, a mothering warrior, up to the task ahead... or so I keep telling myself.


2 comments:

  1. AAAAAAHHHHHHH! Congratulations!!!! I so hope everything works out for you guys and you'll soon get to hold that little bundle in your arms!

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  2. Thank you, Miranda!! We're holding onto hope and faith over here!

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