My daughter saw a picture of me the other day , holding her, taken when my father was here visiting. I pointed out the baby was her, she didn't quite get it and I wanted to make sure she knew who her Grandfather was as he lives abroad and I don't want him forgotten. I was saying Doedoe, it's his nick name , her older cousin said it one time when she was little ( I think ) and it stuck. After a second she said Doedoe and pointed to him , my heart melted a wee bit that she was getting it. And then she said the words I have waited a life time to here, she pointed at me in the picture and said Mummy.
You see we , her and I have been waiting a long time to be together. Every part of her was hard fought and won. I needed her, wanted her, prayed, begged and saved for her. Told myself I could live with out her and knew that I actually couldn't. I tried for many years for her , cried many tears for her, over missed periods only for it to come to nothing. Finally swallowed my pride and paid for her. I put all my eggs literally in one basket , shoved them in with every hope and dream and desperate thought along with all the positive and negative what ifs and put my fate in people in white coats. You see she is IVF. I was pricked and pushed and pulled emotionally and mental and physically. I've taken enough hormones to never go through menopause. I popped pills for everything under the sun, given blood, they've taken blood. Had what feels like a small army look at my neither regions inside and out ! And that was all just to get pregnant. We Mums know all the wonderful things that happen once you actually get up the duff. Can you stay pregnant. You count the weeks as they go by thanking silently every deity in the world that you and her made it one step closer. You continue to take a fist full of pills, eat this, don't eat that , throw up everything anyway. Get scanned and judged and pricked and prodded. You bloat, click and waddle through 40 ish weeks till they ( in my case ) cut her out and take away the first marker of Motherhood for me.
Then I struggled with actually being a Mum, making sure this tiny wee person made it through, ate enough, pooped enough , slept enough and was challenged in life to learn everything she needs to know to be enough. I struggled with pre natal depression , as I felt useless and broken that I could not do it on my own. Then post natal depression and anxiety. Throw in Breastfeeding and normal new mum nerves that we all have, I was in a sort of daze. We all second guess ourselves and hope for the best , that they will walk and talk and do all the things they are supposed to around the times they are supposed to. The first year or so didn't feel real and I was scared I was missing it and messing it up. Not until she pointed at me in a photograph and told me that she knew who I was , and I was hers, did, in that moment everything slowed down and fall in to place for the first time in my life . She knew in her way what I had done and gone through to get her. Like she was waiting in the stars for me, hanging out with the ancestors watching me struggle and finally rewarding the heart ache with one simple word. Mummy
This will be my 2nd Mothers day, coming up. The first one was special because everyone else was acknowledging it in my life but this year I finally feel it in myself and I will be revelling in the day. And you should too, look at your kids , they are your life work and you are doing a great job and one day they might even tell you , in their own special way.