There are all sorts of mothers out there…
There are mothers who get conceive easily, manage the 9 months prior to the birth of their child with a textbook perfect pregnancy and deliver a normal, healthy, full term child.
There are mothers who struggle to conceive and may need to use costly methods such as IVF and some mothers, may never conceive.
There are mothers who deliver a baby too early and that baby clings to life in the hum of the NICU for days, weeks or even months.
There are mothers who deliver angel babies, a stillbirth early on, or late.
There are mothers who deliver that perfect baby, only to discover they came with a little extra chromosome, or perhaps missing one or any permutation of genetic anomalies.
There are mothers whose little ones have grown up into mothers themselves and the empty nest feels lonely and hard.
There is no perfect outcome…Life happens and it happens fast and often in unexpected ways. Even what looks to be a physically perfect pregnancy, childbirth and growing child, emotional taxes still have to be made and none of us are exempt from living a life far different than what we expected.
So, regardless of where you find yourself on the mother continuum, life is not always the way we wish it could be. While it’s easy for our minds and hearts to search for the ‘why’ and even feel slighted or gypped, there is another way to look at the unexpected events that come to us all, as women.
In case you need a little shift in perspective to the hard things you face, this is a wonderful essay on finding the beautiful parts to our difficult lives.