Except for an infertile woman, it is not.
I have always loved the Christmas season. It has always made me happy and excited and feel like a child again myself.
The past few years, struggling with infertility, it has been harder. Being with family on Christmas Eve with a newly pregnant cousin was hard. Having that pregnant cousin's little boy's first Christmas last year was hard. Watching parents get excited over the wonder in their children's eyes is hard. And of course, lest we forget, Christmas is ultimately the celebration of the birth of a baby.
This Christmas will be exceptionally hard. Not only will yet another Christmas go by where I am not pregnant, but it is the first that will go by where I SHOULD have been pregnant. I should be sitting at Christmas dinner with a popping belly, feeling my own little one sommersaulting inside, getting ready to make his/her appearance in the world.
I have been listening to Christmas music (longer than I'll admit!) and there are certain songs that make me cry. Any song that talks of Mary and her baby (What Child is This? Mary, Did You Know? etc) starts the floodgates. And every time the floodgates open, it's like I'm starting all over, and the grief is as fresh as if it happened yesterday.
All I want for Christmas is to have my baby back.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
When you realize your stepkids do love you...
Had an email in my inbox that literally brought tears to my eyes. It was a Facebook notification email, and the subject line said, "DSS2 listed you as his mother on Facebook".
It makes me so happy when they think of me as a mom. When DSS1 introduced me to someone one day, he said, "This is my mom." As an infertile woman, who may never get to have a biological child, these small moments light my world. It is a taste of what mothers get every day, and it makes me long for more. More of the same from DSSs, more from the children we hope to add to our family, more of the love of a family that I have always craved.
At my sister-in-law's house a few weeks ago, I was sitting on her (super comfy) couch watching tv, and DSS1 came and curled up next to me with his head on my shoulder, and I scratched his head. He's twelve, and won't be cuddly like that for much longer, so I eat it up when I can. But as I was sitting there, the thought came to me - If I never get to have a biological child, is this enough? Could I be happy with the life of loving someone else's children as my own? In the past, that answer was always no. But for the first time, it seemed to me that yes, I could be happy. If I spent the rest of my life only loving DSSs as if I gave birth to them, I could die a contented, complete woman.
That thought kind of scared me a bit. It scares me that I may be reaching the acceptance stage of infertility's grieving cycle. Don't misunderstand - I am not ready to give up yet by any means, but there is a little inkling of thought somewhere in the back of my mind that I could live a full, happy life even without ever giving birth.
It makes me so happy when they think of me as a mom. When DSS1 introduced me to someone one day, he said, "This is my mom." As an infertile woman, who may never get to have a biological child, these small moments light my world. It is a taste of what mothers get every day, and it makes me long for more. More of the same from DSSs, more from the children we hope to add to our family, more of the love of a family that I have always craved.
At my sister-in-law's house a few weeks ago, I was sitting on her (super comfy) couch watching tv, and DSS1 came and curled up next to me with his head on my shoulder, and I scratched his head. He's twelve, and won't be cuddly like that for much longer, so I eat it up when I can. But as I was sitting there, the thought came to me - If I never get to have a biological child, is this enough? Could I be happy with the life of loving someone else's children as my own? In the past, that answer was always no. But for the first time, it seemed to me that yes, I could be happy. If I spent the rest of my life only loving DSSs as if I gave birth to them, I could die a contented, complete woman.
That thought kind of scared me a bit. It scares me that I may be reaching the acceptance stage of infertility's grieving cycle. Don't misunderstand - I am not ready to give up yet by any means, but there is a little inkling of thought somewhere in the back of my mind that I could live a full, happy life even without ever giving birth.
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