Multiple Mother’s Days

Did you know Ireland and America have two different Mother’s Days? It’s not something terribly interesting or noteworthy unless you’re an expat. For a few years, I thought it was quite convenient – we celebrate my mother-in-law on Irish Mother’s Day (or Mothering Sunday, as it’s called), which is coming up this Sunday, and my own mother on American Mother’s Day later in the spring. I don’t think I’ve actually gotten to be with my own mom on Mother’s Day since I moved to Ireland, which is crummy, but we could celebrate her from afar, which is still nice.

But do you know when two mother’s days became really annoying? When I wanted to become a mother, but I wasn’t any closer to becoming a mother. For about five years. Which is a total of ten mother’s days. Ugh.

(And while we’re throwing parental trivia around, Father’s Day? Same in Ireland as in America. Grrrr. How is that fair?)

I’ve started a kind of lengthy post about our (ongoing) infertility journey but it’s still not ready to see the light of day, so here is a small instalment. When you’re trying to get pregnant and not having any luck, days like mother’s day and father’s day are particularly hard. Not because I don’t love celebrating my mother, because she deserves lots and lots of celebrating – especially for that extra level of mothering that she manages to provide when her over-thirty-year-old daughter calls from across the ocean in puddles of tears over something relatively un-fixable that has reduced her to puddles of tears occasionally for years. (Luckily, I manage not to do this on actual mother’s day – gotta give the lady a break!)

But mother’s days are hard because they are the days that it’s nearly impossible to avoid wondering whether you’ll ever get to join the club that gets to be celebrated on mother’s day. There’s so much mystery to infertility, so many questions about why it affects who it affects, and simply nothing that can give a guarantee you’ll ever make it into the club. It affects so many people, but then again it doesn’t affect other people. It’s such a strange one! And there’s no guarantee all the doctors in the world could figure out how to make you pregnant if you aren’t. In some cases, they can, and in some cases they can’t. The internet is awash in stories of success stories and stories that don’t end so happily. Why it happens, to nice people who would be nice parents, is a mystery. And a crummy one at that.

Even now that I am a mother, I don’t feel very excited about celebrating mother’s day. That’s not to say I’m not excited about being a mother. That excitement has not and will not ever wear off. But the thought of mother’s day still makes me feel uncomfortable. It still has so many memories of wondering and worrying attached to it, so many feelings of wanting so badly to be in a club I couldn’t figure out how to get in. I hated that feeling and a sliver of it is still lingering. I also hate knowing that I have friends and family who will still have that achey feeling on Sunday.

I wish I had some kind of suggestion as to how to make it better on those especially crummy days, but I’m not sure I do. For me, at least, having to talk about how painful it was to not know if I’d ever be a mother on mother’s day was somehow worse. Michael always made a point of giving me an extra big squeeze and reassuring me that he knew I’d be a great mother one day, and that extra love and acknowledgement did help a little. But mostly, it was always one of those days I just plastered a smile on my face (sometimes more successfully than others – I’m not always good at pretending!), avoided Facebook and Instagram, and tried not to have a major meltdown in front of too big an audience.

Great strategy, huh?

One thing Michael and I did realize after a few years was that it was kind of nice to have a few people we could talk to about how crummy a mystery infertility is. To joke and laugh and sometimes cry about how absurd and isolating and lonely it can be outside that club looking in. It was also helpful to know that we weren’t the only ones in the same boat, although it was never fun to learn that someone was having the same struggle we were. At least we weren’t the only ones avoiding Instagram on mother’s day and trying not to snark at someone when they joked about putting their misbehaving child up for adoption (I kid you not). But while our instinct was to shut out the world and never talk about it, having a few people we could vent to on Whatsapp or over a glass of wine was actually therapeutic.

All that to say I remember how it feels, how hard those days are, how hard Sunday might be for some of you. If you’re in the middle of it, you’re not the only one. If you want to send me a big old rant about how crummy it is, I am all ears and empathy. And I’m giving you a big, virtual extra hug and wishing and praying that you won’t have to feel that way for much longer.