As Mother’s Day approaches the comments begin to roll in... ‘Wow you qualify for Mother’s Day now’
I guess it’s simple, everyone’s standards of qualifying for motherhood are different. Some may believe that you only ‘qualify’ if you bring physical life into the world, I personally feel that motherhood is so much more.
Motherhood to me are those women who work unlimited hours raising their children to be the best they can be through encouragement and love. Motherhood are those friends who offer advice and support when your Mother can’t or won’t. Motherhood is the Aunties who offer a hug, a smile or a kind word when they see you need it. Motherhood is seeing that positive pregnancy test whether your pregnancy goes full term or not. Motherhood is caring for animals, a different species, unconditionally and doing your best to understand their needs. Motherhood is the step-mums who battle each day with the fear of not being good enough but giving it their all, even when it feels impossible. Motherhood are those loving words, acts of kindness and the unconditional support we choose to offer even when we can’t offer it to ourselves. It is also the incredible men who play both Mum and Dad offering love and encouragement every single day to ensure their child never misses out.
Being a Mother is more than a title or DNA, it’s the act of endless, pure and unconditional love that you feel and give.
We’ve celebrated Mother‘s Day and Father’s Day for years, not only from our pets but also from our angel babies. For us celebrating and acknowledging the fact we lost our babies has been a really important part of our healing process. Each positive pregnancy test brings with it the expectation of a baby arriving, it brings with it that unconditional love and it brings with it the imagination of what the future will look like. To lose a pregnancy is more than just ‘a heavy period’ it’s the loss of a child, the loss of a piece of your heart and the loss of who you once were. Every woman who has lost a pregnancy should be recognised as a Mother, because that’s exactly what they are. As a society we put successful pregnancies on a pedestal, we talk about babies and children freely and we acknowledge how ‘hard‘ Mothers have it. To often we silence the hundreds of thousands of Mothers out there with empty arms that need our acknowledgement, that need raising up and that need to know they matter too.
This may be my first Mother’s Day with an earth child but this isn’t my first Mother’s Day.
I personally find it very insulting to tell or insinuate to a woman who has lost a baby or multiple babies, that she ‘didn‘t qualify’ for Mother’s Day previously, it is nothing more than extremely insensitive and disrespectful. Words hurt but the understanding that someone doesn’t acknowledge your child hurts more. We saw our first babies strong heartbeat one week before we lost him or her, we know that our baby was alive and we know that our baby matters. Our other pregnancies were slightly different where we didn’t see a heartbeat but we had our positive pregnancy test and that was the point for us that they mattered. This Mother‘s Day for me will be celebrated no differently to the last few years because each and every one mattered just as much.
So to all those women out there who struggle around Mother’s Day because they don’t feel acknowledged or recognised as Mother‘s know that I see you, I hear you and I am celebrating you.
