On Motherhood

May 2023 after a successful IVF stimulation cycle, we had one viable embryo to transfer. ONE! One chance at having our own baby.

That’s him right there. Our miracle baby! Can you believe it? Sometimes I can’t! I can’t believe I’m celebrating my second Mother’s Day as a mom! We got lucky in so many ways.

Infertility and IVF were such scary, stressful experiences. I remember so vividly the feelings of hope and fear — that back and forth swing cycle of good news tempered by caution and too many negative statistics.

Just because we got our rainbow baby and our happy ending walking around laughing and being so damn cute doesn’t mean that trauma disappears. It pops up every time someone asks when we are having another child. It pops up every time I look at our savings account and realize we’ll be years recovering. It pops up every time I see a pregnant woman and realize I’ll never be there again.

I am so so thankful for this little guy. He is truly joy and light. I’m so glad we chose hope when everything looked so bleak.

When you are in the midst of the infertility battle it is hard to imagine what motherhood will actually be like. You are so wrapped up in just trying to get there and so afraid to dream too big in case nothing works. Now a year plus into motherhood, I can honestly say it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

Motherhood is second guessing yourself and challenge after challenge. It is risk assessment and clean up duty. It is defeat and frustration. But it is also sweet little hands patting you to be held. Peek-a-boo around a corner and toothy grins. Watching your baby bloom and realizing you facilitated that!

It is losing more of yourself than you could ever have imagined but finding that your heart grew by 100000%.

Motherhood is full of contradictions:

You can be covered in some form of slime — spit up, puree, snot, poop — and still function. Ok! Not poop, you’ve got to wash that off!

You can simultaneously want two hours alone and be dying to hold your baby close.

You can survive on 3 hours sleep and get shhhiiiitttt done but then get six hours on a fluke and be exhausted the next day.

You can feel so alien in your own body and, yet, know you are in the exact right place and time.

You can hold more emotion, contradictions, and strength than ever before.

There is nothing as good as being his mother!

So here is to the joy and tears, laughter and anxiety, love and wonder that is motherhood!

Happy Mother’s Day!

You can read about our IVF/infertility journey in this post.