Mother’s Day Reflections

To say I had been anticipating mother’s day would be the understatement of the century.  After having spent two consecutive Mother’s Days in a row pregnant, I honestly didn’t know how I’d feel finally getting to celebrate my first one. If my life were a movie it would have been this scene where Craig and Aleck come into the bedroom with flowers and cards, and I wake up overwhelmed with emotion so thankful for where we are but feeling the heavy weight of the two “daughters” I had recently lost (Yeah, I’m calling Sadie my daughter, or better yet, my doghter).  Then we hug, we cuddle, and watch Aleck kick around on the bed while we look at each other lovingly.  That sort of happened.

The real emotional tsunami came the night before, as if the anticipation of the first Mother’s Day was larger and heavier than the day itself.  Different feelings and thoughts were rushing at me from all sides and I found myself, at that moment, very focused on what we’ve lost, what we don’t have, what’s missing from our lives.  I don’t find myself thinking about what happened in June of 2010 all that often and when I talk about it to other people I do it without welling up, without a tear, and sometimes just as casually as if I was talking about the weather or where to go for great hamburgers.  Maybe it’s just how I cope, it’s certainly not something I like to spend a lot of time thinking about or talking about.  When it happened I so wanted to pretend that I was never pregnant, that it had never happened.  Initially I didn’t want to see her and the idea of holding her seemed like a sick joke.  I’m so glad I did see her, I even took pictures of her which I haven’t looked at since right after it happened, and now that I have Aleck I know that she will always be a part of me.  I don’t want her to be any kind of a focus in our lives, I don’t want her to be a warning tale of what could happen, and I never want her to be some kind of an intangible idealized baby that Aleck will ever feel like he has to fill her shoes, live up to our expectations of her or even consider her as a part of his life.  We didn’t name her, not truly.  Yes we had a name picked out for her, my grandmother’s name, but we never called her that.  I was actually really relieved that Aleck was a boy since I wasn’t sure how I would feel about using that name so close to our loss, but thankfully that was a bridge we didn’t have to cross.  When I was pregnant with her a lot of my friends were also pregnant at the time and as they are all celebrating the 2nd year of life for their little ones  when I go to these celebrations I can’t help but think that she would be about to turn 2 as well.

But losing Sadie was much harder.  I think about her everyday, still see her ghost around our house, at the front door sitting on our shoes, under the desk when I’m in the office, and even on her dog bed which we haven’t had the heart to put away yet.  With Sadie we rescued her when she was just 10 weeks old, we raised her, trained her, and loved her every single day.  The baby was really the potential for life.  It was watching our dreams get smashed into a million pieces, but we never knew her.  We never heard her cry, or coo, she never held our fingers or laughed at our silly noises, she just never made it that far.  When we lost Sadie we did lose our first born, an intergal part of our family, our cuddle bear, our safety blanket.  Now that the weather is consistently nice and Aleck is sitting comfortably in his big boy stroller we go for walks around the neighborhood.  Initially I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take the same routes I took with Sadie, not that it would hurt for me to go down those streets, but more wondering if we need a fresh start.  For anyone that’s walked around my Bario you will know that if you’ve carved out some pretty walking routes you need to hang on to them because one block this way or that and it can get kind of ugly.  So we went on Monday and again today on my favorite walking route and even down my favorite street that Sadie and I used to enjoy so much.  I found it comforting to be there with Aleck enjoying the scenery the way I always did.  In the end her timing was spot on, coming home from the vet after putting her to sleep we weren’t coming home to an empty apartment, we were coming home to a little boy who needs all our attention.  Maybe she knew what she was doing.

Like everything else in life, my first Mother’s Day was very bittersweet.  It certainly wasn’t a Rom Com moment staring Anne Hathaway and Bradely Cooper (throwing that out there just in case this does make a movie one day).  Sunday was a day like any other Sunday with cards and flowers.  The present will probably be returned, my parents were an hour late to my in-laws for the celebration, and my mother in-law, well, she’s a whole other blog I just don’t want to get into.  What keeps me going is that little love bug sleeping on the other side of my condo right now, who had fallen asleep in my arms earlier today, who loves his carrots with olive oil, and who holds my finger tight when I read him “Goodnight Moon.”  It’s certainly not a bad life after all.

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