When Mother's Day Sucks

It's the Hallmark holiday of the year - the biggest day of profits for card companies, flower shops, jewellery stores and restaurants. 

And for the first six years of my marriage, it was the worst day of my life.

I know many of you can relate to this feeling. It's not that we don't have mothers of our own to love. It's not that we don't want to become mothers.

It's that for many of us, we have tried and failed to become mothers.

We have spent too many months grieving over another menstrual cycle.

We have gone to all our friends' baby showers and tried to pretend we were crying tears of joy for them. We eventually stopped going.

We have sat through church services listening to sappy sermons extolling the glories of motherhood and then walked out with a "gift for all the mothers" that wounded us afresh.

We have known the excitement of a positive pregnancy test, only to be destroyed by a miscarriage.

We have gone through failed fertility treatments.

We have endured the well-intentioned yet unbelievably insensitive inquisitions of friends, family, neighbours, co-workers and complete strangers: "So, when are you two going to have kids?"

We have buried our stillborn children. 

We have held healthy babies in our arms, only to bury them the next week. 

We have held vigil by a hospital bedside for months, and then been forced to make a choice to remove life support from the tiny body of our child.

We have longed for a perfect child and felt cheated when our child was born with brain damage or autism or Down Syndrome. We grieved the loss of what could have been. 

This is the reality of the thorny climb to the pinnacle that society calls "motherhood" - it is painful for many of us. It is harsh and unforgiving. It mocks us and rejects us and undermines us.

There is nothing more demoralizing than to realize that every part of your body is designed to be a mother - breasts to feed and comfort, a womb to carry, an egg released every month just waiting to be fertilized - the form and function of our being mocking our inability to fulfill its destiny. 

For women who pop babies out like nerf darts, this is a foreign land. You mean well - you think it will help me if you tell me, "But at least you know you CAN get pregnant!" You ask me to hold your baby, because surely then my "mommy hormones" will magically make me pregnant, too. You tell me that adopting a baby will "definitely make you get pregnant with your own right after that!" You trot out pithy, poisonous platitudes: "Well, you can always get pregnant again, you know," or "You're not the only one who's lost a baby."

You are living in another universe.

You have not walked my path; do not presume to give me proverbs.

You are a mother - and I am happy for you - but do not minimize my grief.

I have known and grown to love many women who have walked these paths. 

I try my best to remember those dark days of longing to be a mother so that I will not become the woman preaching from my distant universe.

This weekend, I promise not to wax eternal about the ways I am honoured by my children. Not as a disservice to their love and sweet gifts and cards, but out of respect for you: a woman who feels a greater pain than can be measured every Mother's Day.

Know that you are on my heart, and that I too have cried bitter tears on this day.

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Read my friend and fellow writer Jen Stewart Fueston's poem "Trying to Conceive" at Ruminate Magazine.

Motherhood is a Choice: Part 3

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Her name was Coco Lucille. "Lucy."

I spoke to her in my dreams. I envisioned her tiny hands and feet as they might have been one day. Her due date - May 2 - was forever branded on my heart.

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When I left the hospital, the doctor gave me his home phone number and asked me to call him if I had any further complications.

By Friday, I needed to call him.

The bleeding wouldn't stop. It had been three days. He booked me to come in for a D&C.

I remember an empty feeling in my stomach, and it wasn't simply from remembering not to eat before my procedure. While I have always argued for the rights of women to have access to medically safe abortions, my personal worldview was that a life was not mine to take, even if it was living inside me.

And though in a cerebral way I knew that my Little Bean was no longer alive - knew that medically I needed to have this procedure - it felt like a betrayal. How could I allow my beautiful baby's remains to be scraped and sucked away from me? Even now, nearly eight years later, I feel guilty that things had to end in such violence.

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Saturday morning, Thanksgiving weekend. The local OB/GYN performed the routine procedure to remove what was left of my pregnancy from my womb. When I came around after the surgery, he was kind-hearted. He spoke to me of what to expect next. He said, "You need to know that after a D&C, your body will be very receptive to pregnancy. You may decide that you want to try again right away. If you aren't feeling ready for that, then you should take extra precautions to avoid getting pregnant in the next few months."

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We didn't tell anyone about the baby other than immediate family - my mom, my sister and her husband and children, and my husband's mother and sister.

I recall sitting at my mom's dining room table, trying desperately to keep a false face from hiding what my false heart did know. I was going through the motions, passing the turkey, eating pumpkin pie, but inside I was screaming. My mom's siblings, my cousin, and my grandma were all present. This was supposed to be the day of my pregnancy announcement.

For some strange reason, my mom decided this would be a great time to start a new tradition of going around the table and each stating something for which we were thankful. I couldn't believe she could be so unbelievably insensitive. What in God's name did she think Ian and I were going to say? It was the most uncomfortable family gathering of my life. I went home and cried myself to sleep.

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That fall, I collected the roses from my garden before the last frost. I've always been far more sentimental than I let on to others. I have boxes of keepsakes - tiny mementoes that mean nothing to anyone else, but that ground me in my experiences and remind me of times of joy and grief in equal measure.

I gathered those roses and I placed every petal in a little bag. In a tiny leap of faith, I decided that if I ever had a daughter, I would give them to her on her wedding day.

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Over the next few months, I am not sure how I made it out of bed in the mornings, let alone how I dragged myself to work. My anger seethed, barely below the surface. I was short with my students, and while I gained a small level of sympathy and cooperation after telling them I'd lost a baby, it lasted for a teenage minute and then they went back to being typical teenagers. I had no patience for their antics or misbehaviour. I dreaded going to work every day.

Ian and I barely spoke. We were both grieving, but we didn't know how to talk to each other about it. The chasm between us was an abyss. I remember lying on our bed sobbing with rage and bitterness. I wouldn't let him touch me. I wore my self-loathing and guilt and inadequacy as badges of honour.

Finally at the end of November, after I knew I should have finished ovulating for that month, I broke down and tried to make some kind of physical amends with Ian. I was so scared. I didn't want to ever be pregnant again. Afterwards, Ian held me in his arms and I cried into his chest.

"I don't want to get pregnant if I'm just going to keep losing babies. I can't take it. It would have been better to have continued believing I couldn't get pregnant than to go through this," I told him between gasping sobs.

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That Christmas, Ian and I decided we should go away and have some time together. We booked a weeklong cruise to the Caribbean. I arranged to take a day off work just before the school holidays started so that we could get away before the rush.

Our cruise was set to embark at 5pm on Friday afternoon from Fort Lauderdale. I was feeling a bit annoyed as the time approached since I knew my period was due to start the week before we left.

When shark week came and went without a period in sight, I had a funny feeling again. No. There was no way I could be pregnant again. I had been very careful to avoid any kind of intimacy except for the week right before my period. There wasn't any possible chance I could be pregnant.

I don't know what possessed me to make the doctor's appointment. I remember sheepishly telling my doctor that I just had a strange feeling, similar to how I'd felt back in August, that I was pregnant again. The nurse took a urine sample; the results were negative. To this day I'm not sure why my doctor sent me for bloodwork. Maybe it was because he felt sorry for me and didn't want to completely dash my hopes. Maybe it was because I told him we were leaving on a cruise and I didn't want to drink if I might be pregnant.

No matter the reason, I went to have bloodwork done at the lab on Wednesday. I gave the doctor's office my cell number and asked them to call me with the results.

As we sailed out of Fort Lauderdale on Friday evening, I called for my voicemail messages. There was nothing.

We embarked on our week away and I drank a margarita on the balcony, soaking in the sun and trying to enjoy my vacation.


- To be continued -

Motherhood is a Choice: Part 2

I found myself in an unexpected situation in August of 2010.

After announcing to family and close friends that we had made the choice to have no kids, I had this strange inkling that I might be pregnant.

I was late, but this wasn't unusual with my PCOS.

I gave my mom the garden ornament. She cried and asked if I was sure.

We attended a Red Hats event with her fellow August-birthday friend Peg. I remember going along and while I don't recall anything of that day, I do know that when I dropped my mom back at her place, I confided that I was wondering if I might be pregnant. I was exhibiting quite a few symptoms that made me wonder.

It took me another week before I finally broke down and took a home-pregnancy test. I had been disappointed so many times before that I just couldn't bear to face another frustrating and futile experience.

My husband was planning to go away for a guys' weekend at a cottage, so I thought perhaps I'd wait until he was gone and take the test by myself.

That lasted for all of one day.

I gave in on Thursday morning. I took the test.

It was positive.

I still remember the surreal feeling I had in those first moments. I really didn't know whether to cry or fly.

I went to work. It was school photo day. I remember getting my picture taken and then telling my Vice-Principal that I would need to miss one of my classes to see the doctor that afternoon.

I honestly don't even remember how or when I told Ian. I just know that I told him before he went on his weekend away.

We were both excited, but cautiously so.

In the next few weeks, I started feeling signs of fatigue and even nausea. This pregnancy became real to me in a way I could hardly describe even now.

I started journalling every day - my thoughts and dreams - in a book for my unborn child. I nicknamed my tiny fetus "Little Bean" and I cannot tell you how in love I was with this ball of cells growing inside me.

About this time, the wife of one of my colleagues revealed that she was also pregnant. I knew they had struggled as well to conceive, and so I congratulated my co-worker and wished him well.

He was worried. He felt she'd told everyone too soon. She was only ten weeks along, and he knew things could still go wrong. But he didn't want to dampen her excitement.

In the third week of September, he came to work with horrible news. His wife had gone in for an ultrasound. While on the table, the technician informed her that she wasn't pregnant anymore. The doctor came in and told her she would likely need to have a D&C to "deal with" the remains of the fetus.

I was absolutely horrified and heartbroken. I remember crying with him in the English office, and I definitely wished I hadn't told him I was pregnant.

That week, I made them a lasagna and an apple pie. My colleague seemed stunned. He thanked me but I knew he was not really able to focus on anything in that moment.

On the last Friday in September, one week after my colleague's loss, I went to the hospital for my first ultrasound. I went alone. I remember thinking of my friends and what they were going through, and feeling some warped type of survivor's guilt as I waited for the technician to show me my baby on the screen.

Only that never happened. She told me to call my doctor's office later that afternoon for the results.

When I called the doctor, the receptionist told me that my dates were off and I wasn't far enough along for the ultrasound to show anything yet. I would need to rebook for another appointment in two weeks.

I remember talking to my mom and saying, "Well, at least I didn't just have the same experience as my friends did."

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It was a Wednesday morning. It was the first week of October, and by my calculations, I was nearly at the 11-week mark in my pregnancy. I was getting excited about Canadian Thanksgiving, which was coming that weekend. Ian and I had made plans to finally tell our family about the baby.

As soon as I escaped from that first moment between asleep and awake, I knew something was wrong. I was bleeding.

I went to the bathroom and everything was red.

I called to Ian, and he quickly dressed and took me to the Emergency Room.

On arrival, they took me into one of the private rooms and gave me a pregnancy test. It came back positive. The doctor tried to be reassuring - perhaps all was not lost.

Then I went in for another ultrasound. I remember the room. Even with the low lighting, I was cut to the quick by the painting on the wall - a Trisha Romance print called "School Days" with lovely young children heading into their tiny one-room schoolhouse.

Trisha Romance's painting entitled "School Days"

That image was seared into my mind's eye, and it hollowed my heart. I felt a sense of spite towards the art, as if I were being personally attacked by that beautiful painting of happy, cherubic children.

As I lay on that cold uncomfortable bed, I cried silently. Tears sliding down my cheeks, I was unable to process what was happening to me.

The doctor came to talk to me. He told me that although I still had high levels of HCG in my blood, I was indeed no longer carrying a viable fetus. He sent me home and told me to take things easy.

Ian and I went back to my mom's place. I remember being in a fair bit of pain - sort of like cramps - and sleeping for most of the afternoon.

Around 6pm, the contractions started. I was going into labour.

The pain was absolutely excruciating, and I had never seen so much blood in my life. Anyone who knows me knows that I pass out if I cut my finger. This was not going to end well.

My mom is a retired nurse. She started timing my contractions. I don't remember much of the next two hours, but I do remember her telling Ian, "We have to take her to the hospital or she's going to bleed to death."

A lot happened over the next twenty-four hours. I was kept in the ER in a bed and they tried to help slow my bleeding and deal with the contractions.

I do remember one incident of my time there that evening. I remember waiting outside the patient bathroom. I was standing in my hospital gown, looking down at my toenails. A nurse came by and said, "Wow! What a great red colour on your nails - I love it!"

All I could think was, "It's the exact same colour as the baby that's bleeding away from me."

- To be continued -