Note: I had already written this when I saw this quote which perfectly sums up this particular blog. **

“We become mothers the very moment we open our hearts to the idea of conceiving a child.”

We’ve talked about moms who had difficult pregnancies and deliveries. We’ve talked about birth mothers who unselfishly decided to give up their babies for adoption.

But there’s one other category of moms we need to talk about for this Mother’s Day.

The women who desperately want to have a baby, but for whatever reason, are either having a very tough time getting pregnant, and staying pregnant, or are just unable to conceive.

And for them, Mother’s Day is a very difficult day. Because in their hearts, they’re moms. But in reality, they’re still trying to get to that place of honor.

It’s a difficult situation to be in. Their friends are having babies, or already have babies. Their relatives are having babies. They’re invited to baby showers and have to put on a strong face and a fake smile to hide their disappointment and envy.

Well-meaning people casually ask when they’re going to start a family and they fight back tears and try to give an answer like “when we’re ready” or something like that, when all they want to do is scream, “We’re trying and it’s not working, and it’s none of your business!”

They see pregnant women and try to fight back their tears while quickly walking away from them.

They avoid the baby department at stores because it hurts too much.

They avoid the greeting card department in grocery stores during this time of year because that’s also a painful reminder of what they don’t yet have. And then the new baby cards are also there…

They hear other women making comments about how they wished they’d never had kids, and want to go up to them and say “I’d gladly take them off your hands if you don’t want them.”

They read stories about women demanding the right to abortions and saying how glad they are to have had that choice, and they just want to die inside from the pain of knowing a woman could choose to abort a child she conceived, when she’d trade places with them in a heartbeat to be able to carry a child.

This, my friends, is the pain of infertility. It’s a terrible thing. And unless you’ve experienced it, like I did, as well as several of my friends, you have no idea what it’s like. It’s an emotional pain that cannot be cured. An emptiness in your heart that won’t go away.

Yes, we were lucky to finally have a child. It took a long time, and a lot of painful and expensive procedures, but we were finally successful that one time. And for that we’re forever thankful to a wonderful doctor who helped us become parents. We were fortunate. Many are not. We also experienced secondary infertility when trying to have another child. And let me tell you this…it’s almost as painful, even though you have one child.

So on this Mother’s Day, let’s also remember the women who so desperately want to be called “mommy”. You may not know who they are, but they certainly do. And let us pray that one day soon they will have that gift of a child that they so desperately want, because that’s the best gift they could ever receive.

** https://nowilaymedowntosleep.org/2019/04/23/internationalbereavedmothersday/