It should have been "just" another ordinary day...just another Mother's Day.
At the time Mother's Day was a day where I honored my mother by going to brunch and drinking mimosas!
My mom and I have always been close, so all I ever took Mother's Day for was..."just an another day"..."another day" to be with my mom.
My sisters both had children young so I can't even remember a big "ta do" for their first Mother's Day. There absolutely could have been a big "ta do" but I was finishing high school and heading off to college...being a mother...celebrating Mother's Day...in my book NOT a big "ta do"...just another ordinary day! So I wouldn't have even noticed...
I always pictured one day I would be the mom at Mother's Day brunch. But having a longing for it...nay...I took it for granted. I guess I just always assumed that someday it would be me.
My first miscarriage was so devastating that I spent that whole year determined to get pregnant again. I don't even recall that Mother's Day after my first miscarriage. I miscarried in March and it was now May. I was down but not out. I still had hope...hope that someday I would be the mom at Mother's Day. So it was just another day...don't get me wrong, I still mourned the loss of my baby and Mother's Day was a deafening reminder but I was sure the following year I would be celebrating Mother's Day as a mom... It still didn't sink in.
I never realized how much I wanted it or that there was an actual possibility...I mean a REAL possibility...that it might not ever happen for me until that following year...until Mother's Day 2011.
It was one year after my first miscarriage. If I didn't miscarry...this would have been my first Mother's Day. And a few months earlier I failed on my last IVF cycle with my own eggs.
It was hitting home and as I sat at my sister's house having brunch and drinking mimosas, it became painfully clear that this might not happen for me.
I had decided to put my adoption plans on hold and pursue donor eggs.
I remember sitting with my mom looking a photos of egg donors, noting how this one had my eye color or that one had my hair...another deafening reminder.
That Mother's Day 2011 was embarrassing and comical to say the least but what no one knew was that I spent my whole drive home crying...suffering in a pain of realization.
There was nothing ordinary anymore...nothing familiar was left.
But I followed through.
I pursued and 4 months later...I was pregnant...I was going to be a mom on Mother's Day!
Mother's Day was no longer going to be this deafening reminder...no longer this pain of realization...it was going to be "just another ordinary day"...just as it should be...
It was going to be my day...or so I thought...by the time Mother's Day rolled around again. I had suffered two miscarriages and have gone through well over 10 cycles.
It wasn't just another ordinary day anymore...it was my own private hell...one where there wasn't enough mimosas...
I think it was then that I stopped picturing myself as a mom on Mother's Day...well, I guess it wasn't that I stopped picturing it...it was that I couldn't picture it...it all faded away...
Mother's Day 20whatever...Whatever the year..I was determined to make it just another ordinary day!
I tried not to think of my lost babies. I tried not to acknowledge the deafening reminders...the pain of realization...
Mother's Day 2014
I celebrated my first Mother's Day as a mom.
Is it the way I "assumed" it would be? The way I pictured it?
Is it just another ordinary day?
No...
Nothing is the way I pictured it...
Nothing is the way this ordinary day should be...
It is extraordinary!
I think that is what makes it so special and so unbelievably magical...
And that will forever make it anything but "just another ordinary day"...
