Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all the wonderful moms out there.  This mom thing is hard - no lie.  You sign up for this gig and there are no guarantees.  It is so painful, heart wrenching, and scary that your heart wants to burst.  Then it is joyful, beautiful and so amazing your heart wants to burst.

I have always wanted to be a mom.  I don't think I will ever forget the emotional roller coaster of trying to get pregnant.  I know my journey was no where near as difficult and challenging as others.  But I do know that the month after month of negative pregnancy tests was hard.  It didn't take long to get pregnant with Jed.  Julia was another story.  She seems to have been difficult from the very beginning!  And in between the two we had a miscarriage.  It was heartbreaking and painful and I still think of that baby.  But then I squeeze my two little ones and my heart continues to beat.

During my pregnancies I was an anxious mess.  I was so worried of losing my baby.  Even past the first trimester - I was afraid of losing them.  The end was the worst.  I was terrified to make it to 39 weeks and then have a cord accident or some other freak occurance and lose my baby.  I was so focused on making it through the pregnancy that I never stopped to think about after.  It never occurred to me that my baby would have any special needs or health problems. 

Julia's eye took us by surprize.  And I still sometimes feel guilt.  When I am low, and feeling like I can't do anything right - it is then that I feel like I failed.  I couldn't even grow a "healthy" baby.  I somehow failed my beautiful girl in the second trimester.  When the tiny blood vessels in her eye were supposed to dissapate, my body failed.  Her eye didn't form the way it should.  Rationally I know that this is not my fault, that there was nothing I could have done different.  Julia just happened to be the 1 in 10,000 who are born with a cataract.  But the emotional part of me doesn't understand that and longs to have done something different.

But here we are.  We have a rambunctious two year old boy whose smile lights a room.  He is funny and smart and handsome.  And we have a beautiful 7 month old who is starting to crawl and really starting to smile.  She is perfect and made our family complete.

I often hear people say, "if I could go back, I wouldn't change anything.  The struggle made me who I am today."  I will freely admit that I am not there yet.  If I was able to go back and change things for Julia so that she didn't have to have surgeries, wear a contact or suffer through patching - I would.  In a heartbeat, I would.  Maybe when she is older she will be able to say the struggle made her the strong woman she is - but right now I would do anything to make things easier for my baby.  That is the heart of a mom. 

Happy Mother's Day!