Mother's Day Musings

When I was a kid and teenager, I never really did the whole Mother's Day thing.  Once I got to college, I at least tried to send my mom a card on Mother's Day.  As I got even older, I started to realize just how much my mom really meant to me and wanted to express that on Mother's Day, so over the last few years, I've sent her flowers.  I also would send flowers to Tim's mom and grandmothers to say "Happy Mother's Day.  We love you."  I realized that it was important to let the moms in our lives know just how much we cared and that you can never say "I Love You" too many times.

Over the two years that we were trying to get pregnant, Mother's Day was just a tad bittersweet.  I still was sending flowers to our moms, but secretly wishing I had my own child so I could be a mother too.  I just wanted so badly to finally belong to the "mommy club".

Last year, I was 12 weeks pregnant with Brianna on Mother's Day.  We had told our families a few weeks before that day that we were finally going to be parents.  So, on that first Sunday in May, while at a Mother's Day lunch at my sister-in-law's house, I was included in the festivities.  Even though I technically wasn't a mom yet, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law both gave me my first Mother's Day cards.  It was wonderful to finally be on the receiving end and to be full of so much joy.  At the time, I was looking forward to the next Mother's Day, when I *would* have a baby in my arms at the family Mother's Day gathering.

Then the unthinkable happened in August and Brianna died, before she was even really born.  Since her death, I've struggled to see where I fit in.  Am I really a mother, since I never got to parent my baby?  How can I be considered a mom when I don't rock a baby to sleep, I don't get up in the middle of the night to give bottles to a screaming baby, I don't have take her to doctor's appointments and have her vaccinated?  I don't do any of the things a mother is supposed to do because I don't have a live child to care for.

Now, as this Mother's Day is fast approaching, I'm wondering, yet again, am I a mother?  I was pregnant on Mother's Day last year and technically wasn't a mother then, but I was still included.  Everyone believed I'd be bringing home a baby at the end of the pregnancy and therefore I was an expectant mom.  But now?  What am I exactly?  What is the word for a woman who was once pregnant but now has no children?  Am I even still considered a mother?  Will my family even acknowledge it this year?  Will I get cards?  Flowers?  Or will they all think it's too painful for me and just not send anything?  Will I be left out?  Should I be?  Am I only just a daughter this Mother's Day?