Mother’s Day has always been so special to me. I have wanted to be a mother since I was very young. I had plenty of practice with my four younger siblings, the youngest who was 15 years my junior. My grandmother always referred to me as a little mother hen.
It was the hardest thing in the world for me when after 5 years of trying to have a baby my husband and I were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. Unexplained? How do you fix that? So after years of infertility, we sought help. There were several failed IVF’s and a horrifying miscarriage just a few days before Mother’s Day. The fertility nurse often commented on how thick my chart was becoming. Fortunately, we ended up being one of the lucky couples who had a successful IVF cycle resulting in the birth of a baby, in our situation, two babies!
Unfortunately, they were born prematurely at 32 weeks and 5 days gestation, so they spent three weeks in the NICU and were still oh so very tiny when they came home. But, just one day before Mother’s Day 9 years ago, they were released from their NICU and home for my very first Mother’s Day.
My heart was just overfilled with love and gratitude to be able to celebrate that very first Mother’s Day with my precious Eden and Xen. My husband went out of his way to make it so very special for his sleep deprived, still recovering from a cesarian section, delirious wife.
I never thought it could be possible, but each year the celebrations got sweeter. How could I be any more grateful for the joys of being a mother than I was that very first Mother’s Day?
Then came a breast cancer diagnosis which brought up a mother’s biggest fear, will my children face growing up without a mother? I tried so hard to stay away from these dark depressing thoughts but often found myself there, which brought tears I had to fight back and hide from my sweet little babies. They were only six at the time of my diagnosis, but it wouldn’t have mattered if they were 16 or 30, thinking about them being without a mom just broke my heart over and over.
As treatment came to an end, so did many of these obsessive worries about dying and not being here for my children. Now here I am, done with treatment (which I finished around Mother’s Day two years ago) and just celebrated my 10th Mother’s Day! I can’t say that I never go down that rabbit hole of worrying if the cancer will come back or spread. I know the statistics and my chances of dealing with the c-word again, but I am not a statistic. I am Eden and Xen’s mother so we will celebrate as we always do, making every moment matter!
