Mother's Day Blues

I'm not keen on Mother's Day. Don't get me wrong--my own mother and I have a great relationship. Yet for anyone who is actively engaged in American society in early May, Mother's Day is tough to ignore. Sometimes I think that if I could ignore it, I wouldn't feel this hollow grief inside me. On the other hand, maybe I need to own that grief.

I don't think I've written about this here before. Actually, I don't think I've been able to deal with this well enough to write about it. But then I realize that everything happened in another time and another life, and that I was another woman. Nothing's the same. So I'm down to dealing and moving on or being haunted for the rest of my life.

People know me as a textbook success story. What few people know is how I have failed in an area where most women (or so it seems to me) succeed without even trying. I am looking at 39 and I have never given birth, nor will I ever. That's the hand I've been dealt.

Once upon a time, I was married. We got married in 1993 and split up in 2001, so for this day and age we didn't do too badly. Between 1998 and 2000, I had five miscarriages. I'll get back to that in a moment, but you can imagine the stress that put on the marriage. After the last miscarriage my doctor told me to stop trying or risk my own life. I think that's when my husband gave up on me. What good was a wife who couldn't help him preserve his genes in a child?

Anyway, I went through five miscarriages. The first one happened at about ten weeks, and the second after twelve weeks. Both times my attending doctors thought I was healthy enough to carry a child to term and encouraged me to keep trying. I did. The next two pregnancies were indeed longer, but both ended in the beginning of the second trimester.

The fifth miscarriage nearly killed me from blood loss. I'd made it five months and had been so hopeful that finally I'd be a mother. Instead I was torn and destroyed, depending on an IV to survive, and dealing not only with the physical pain but the pain of knowing I could never produce my own flesh and blood. My husband was nowhere around me. I don't know where he wandered off to in those days, but he wasn't interested in comforting me.

When I finally got home I crawled into bed and didn't emerge for weeks. Of course I was depressed, but I remember still feeling relieved when the bleeding finally stopped, when I could eat solid food again, when I could actually walk from one end of my apartment to the other. I wouldn't be able to bring new life into the world, but I would live, and as I regained my strength, that didn't seem so bad.

As I said at the beginning, all of this happened a long time ago. I haven't even spoken to my ex-husband since the divorce was finalized. Besides, there are plenty of people who are perfectly all right with me the way I am. There's always adoption, and there's always a child who needs to be adopted.

And I'm not ready for all that anyway. I'm still a work in progress. 10 years from now I might be ready to parent, but not today. Maybe that's the cosmic purpose behind my disastrous childbearing--if I'd had a child, I wouldn't be who I am today.

Kudos and due respect to all mothers. I'm not so worried about joining your ranks anymore. I don't have kids, but I do have people depending on me and a purpose in my care. Looks to me like I'm mothering pretty well, after all.