Mother's Day

Well to be honest, mother's day is a very difficult day for me.  Not following along with our history here, but I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about being a mother without a child.  Today was an ok day - I don't believe that 'time heals all wounds' but time definitely makes things a little duller of a pain.  Last year I asked Tad to not do anything for mother's day, I didn't want to think about it.  At that point I was only a few days away from my due date, and was already having a really rough time.  So last year Tad let me decide how I wanted to spend the day.  I don't remember a whole lot of the day, except that we went to the hospital.  When we were in the hospital having the baby (I'm sure I'll talk about it more in a later entry) they were amazing to us.  One of the things that they have is called the Wall of Miracles - if you have a live baby, you are able to put a plaque on the wall with their name birthdate and footprint, for I think a $50 donation.  If you have a baby die, they give you a plaque for free.  All the babies plaques are intermixed, you can see some families' histories on the wall.  So we went to see Gabriel's plaque last year - below I will add some pictures of it.  We didn't have him buried, so it is probably the closest thing to visiting his grave that we have.  We go there whenever, but mainly we've gone on important days so far.  His due date, mother's day, father's day, his birthday, and when we've had family in town.  So this year, we again had a relaxing day, this morning we stayed around home, I got some sun (a little too much actually) and didn't do much.  This afternoon we went over and visited Gabriel's plaque.  He had a new 'neighbor' plaque since the last time we'd been there.  It was another baby that had died.  To see how many babies are up there each year that don't make it seems so impossible.  We often feel so alone in our pain, but really there must be people everywhere going through the same thing.  Afterwards we went for a long walk, then a nice Sunday drive, and out for dinner.    I know that some people do not see me as a mother, because I don't have a child here, but I am absolutely a mother.  I have not had to stay up nights with a crying infant, but I was awake nights throwing up all night.  I haven't had to choose a day care, or how to parent, but I did have to choose to be poked and proded daily in order to keep my son as safe as possible.  I look forward to future mother's days where I can hold a child in my arms, but I will never forget my first child.  I may not look like a mother to an outsider, but I have known the wonder and amazement of holding a child in my arms that my body had been able to form - which is truly a miracle.  To all of you moms out there, I hope you had a wonderful day.



Gabriel's plaque - we have a matcing one at home.