Mothers Day - a bittersweet occasion

It's Mothers Day here in New Zealand. It is the fourth Mothers Day I've had since trying to add to add to our family. Our daughter was two years old when I had my first Mothers Day within this SIF era - she is now six.

Every single Mothers Day for the last four years has been the same - bittersweet. There is that sheer appreciation and gratitude of having the one child that I know many dealing with primary infertility would kill to have. But it is tainted by the pain and heartache caused by a longing that has lingered for too long - to have another child.

In some ways I am in a good place - or at least a better place around SIF. In other ways the ongoing angst of living with a broken dream makes it hard to push on and live life on lifes terms. Days like this - Mothers Day - are what I consider to be milestone days for those of us that fall into the infertility bracket. No matter how healed or how much acceptance there might be around infertility - it tends to flare up at times like this.

Perhaps it was a blessing that today when my husband and daughter decided to take me out for a Mothers Day lunch that because we hadn't booked, we ended up driving around and having more of an afternoon tea at a venue that wasn't overloaded with Mums of many. I know today is one of those days that I needed to not be around completed families. So it was nice to end up in a cafe that wasn't so child-friendly (but still very nice).

My SIF guilt rares it's ugly head on Mothers Day. Especially because my daughter was so excited about it this year - she woke up at midnight and stood at our bedroom door and asked if it was morning yet! She had bought a present with her Dad and had planned a special in-bed breakfast - pancakes which she bought in on a tray for me. We sat in bed and shared them together. A lovely morning and I felt truly pampered.

I started off the day after that feeling hopeful that perhaps this Mothers Day the emotional backlash wouldn't occur - that I'd feel good all day and that SIF would remain in the background. But the feelings are up there - the hurt and the longing for a dream that wasn't to be. I cannot help but wonder where we will be a year from now - it will be the Mothers Day after our file expires in the adoption pool. At least we will have an answer on where things lie around adding to our family by then.

I emailed our social worker recently and said to her my husband and I want to just keep to our original plan - to see what happens over the next 11 months. We will review/reassess things next year to see if we want to venture down the fostering route. At the moment fostering doesn't feel like the right option for our family so we will have to wait and see what happens.

I have had a bit of grief surface of late and it's more to do with a life on hold and all the pain that has caused me/my family over the last four and half years than the pain of not having a second child. Although my life feels as though it is becoming unstuck - that I am moving on from a life in standstill - I feel so much remorse for the pain my SIF grief has caused my family - even if it is only subtle.

It seems so unfair that for most of my daughter's life I have been grieving for an unborn child. I really feel this today - on Mothers Day - that my grief has overshadowed the joy of having my beautiful daughter. Oh how I wish I never desired a second child.

I have had a lot of positive feedback around an article I had published in the local paper lately. I am making a real effort to focus on my creative ambitions - my writing and art. Coincidentally that focus all halted once SIF hit - and SIF was all I wrote and thought about for over four years. Now I am writing about other things and painting again. So I am moving forward in my own way once again.