Some Thoughts on Motherhood, Longing, and Loss

Written for my personal Facebook on Mother's Day 2020

I just want to say, Happy Mother's Day to all the amazing and wonderful mothers I know. I hope someday to be counted in your number 🌷💐🌹

I wanted to share some of my thoughts, but please don't read on if the topic of loss will upset you. 

Speaking from the heart, Mother's Day is a hard time for me. Since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to be a mother. From my earliest memories of lining up all seventeen of my cabbage patch dolls pretending they were my children, to standing at the altar saying "I do" to my husband, I knew from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet that I would be a mother--I had names picked out, dreams laid in my heart. But God had other plans for my life. I have been married for five years, (six in October), and have no children. 

After nearly three years of trying, in July of 2017, I conceived. The blue line on the pregnancy test made my heart soar. At last! I thought. I had my first miscarriage less than a month later. I was devastated. I don't know how I would have gotten through that time without my faith. Knowing I would meet my child in heaven one day was a balm in a time of confusion and pain. Regardless, I didn't deal with the loss well at all and fell into depression. When my cycles returned, I conceived again in February 2018. This time my hope was more cautious, more reserved. And with good reason, because a week later, I miscarried again, and my husband broke several bones in a major car accident the very next day.

I felt very strongly, as I nursed my husband back to health, feeding him, bathing him, carrying him (literally), and wheeling him to doctor's appointments that the miscarriage was a lesson. I had felt so strongly that we weren't complete somehow, and I longed to "start our family." The reminder of the fragility of life, of my husband's mortality suddenly shifted my perspective. God had already given me a family--I was already very blessed. The fog of depression lifted; I saw clearly. 

I watched many of my close friends and sisters in Christ who struggled with infertility at last conceive. I encouraged when I could, and shared my perspective when I could. I could talk about my losses without crying. I shifted my focus to being the best wife I could be, and I opened a licensed home day care so I could spend my days caring for and loving little ones. 

My third miscarriage happened without me even knowing I was pregnant. My body had never returned to normal, and when several months passed without my cycle, I didn't really even notice. Though I hadn't had time to hope that time, I blamed myself much more than ever. One of the little boys I watched had violently kicked me in the stomach during a tantrum the day before. (He was on the autism spectrum and his tantrums were sometimes very serious). I felt like I was getting it all wrong again. Was I being punished for something? That miscarriage was also different because I saw the little child--I recognized little legs, little hands. I was devastated. 

The church service after my third miscarriage I felt tears running down my face as the Pastor's family sang "Does Jesus Care?" and I still cry when I hear that song.
I have been so blessed above measure, but my heart aches. I long to be a mother with all my heart, and I hope that some day, I'll be counted worthy. 

I do not feel that I am "owed" a child, and I don't feel left out in the celebration of my friends and loved ones who are mothers. I salute them! But, still, the celebration of motherhood is a needle in my lack. I prod on a tender spot that I do not always remember is sore. So many little things do the same--like when my sister in law announced the name for the baby girl she's expecting, and it happened to be the name I'd picked out if my first pregnancy had been a girl. It is not jealousy that tears me, but grief. As with so many kinds of love, it is bitter and it is sweet. 

I wrote a poem today about how I have been feeling, and I'll share it here as a kind of conclusion to my thoughts: 

I am not a useful tree

My fruit withers and drops unripe.

An unripe fruit's all pith and pit--

Sorrow of the bitterest type.

No flesh remains to love me back

And to rise up and call me blessed

And nothing but the pain of hope

As comfort while I clean the mess.

To love a child I'll never meet,

Cept when these feet reach heaven's shore!

The thought runs through my mind replete

Some days I feel I can't take more.

I am so sorry, little one,

For the time you spent inside my womb.

Unformed and small, yet so loved,

And my body became your tomb.