I know I just started this whole “Mommy Hearts It Monday” thing where I feature something I love as a Mommy every week. Well, this Monday, I want to do something a little different in light of Mother’s Day coming up. Above is me with my Mom. While I am and should be excited for my first mother’s day with babies to hold in my arms, I also have a very heavy heart. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the women, for whom this time of year must be difficult. Women who have miscarried or lost unborn children, women who have lost babies that were born but spent too little time here on earth, women who struggle with infertility, and women who have lost their mothers.
Let me do a quick flash back to last Mother’s Day. We had just found out I was pregnant again on April 29th. I say again because in December 2012, at 12 weeks gestation, we found out our first baby no longer had a heartbeat. I had spent most of my adult life doing everything I could not to get pregnant. I was building my professional career as was Alvin, we were saving to buy a house, we were saving to have enough money to have kids and raise a family, we just weren’t “ready” yet. I never allowed myself to get too set on having kids of my own because I always thought in the back of my mind, what if I CAN’T have kids. I don’t want to get my hopes up or my heart set on it because if it’s not part of God’s plan for me, I don’t want to be upset about it. Well, around August of 2012 we had just bought a house. Not just any house but a house in which we could actually see ourselves staying long term and raising a family in. If you know Alvin and I, you know that’s a big deal with how many times we’ve moved in the past 10 years. As soon as we closed on our house and started moving in, we decided to start trying. We still weren’t sure we were totally ready but it was never going to happen if we didn’t start trying at some point…. or at least stop trying to keep it from happening. AND… we didn’t NEED to be ready right then anyway, after getting pregnant we’d have 9 months to prepare right?
Alvin’s sister, who had miscarried her first pregnancy several years prior (and had since been advised not to conceive for health reasons), had just started trying again. How perfect would it be if we both got pregnant and our babies would be so close with their cousins?! It would be both of our first kids so it would be so fun to go through the pregnancy together. We talked about all the fun stuff we would do together if we were both to get pregnant. As much as I was still trying not to get my heart set on it and not to get too excited about the idea of a baby and my own little family, I had completely gotten my heart set on it. My sister-in-law was educating me on how to track my cycle, how to use ovulation test strips to determine exactly what time of the month I was ovulating, which pregnancy tests to buy, etc., etc.. A couple months went by with negative test results. By the 3rd month I had the TTC (trying to conceive) thing down. I had seen an OB and I checked out fine. She gave me her own advice for what time of the month to try. I took all of the knowledge I had acquired on the subject, and we gave it a good shot. It worked! And like the naive, never been pregnant before, giddy excited Mommy to be I was, I believed I was going to have a happy healthy baby that June. Now I knew things could go wrong and not to announce anything or get too excited until that first ultrasound, but I was so excited! I remember trying to think of a fun way to tell Alvin but couldn’t contain my excitement. It was about 4:00 in the morning when I took the test because I couldn’t sleep and had already decided I was going to take a test that morning, so I sat quietly, pretty much staring at Alvin as he slept, until he awoke on his own. I probably would have just done something to wake him but he had a professional MMA fight scheduled about a week later and needed his rest so I waited. The minute he woke up I was in his face saying “GUESS WHAT!!!!?”
You can read the full story here but basically we went on to see a heartbeat at our 7 week ultrasound, get really excited about there actually being a little baby in there, announce to friends and family at 10 weeks, find out my sister-in-law was also pregnant and expecting 3 weeks before us, and then find out our little baby no longer had a heartbeat at 12 weeks. It was devastating. For 2+ months we had started to prepare ourselves. We wondered what our baby would look like, act like, what kind of parents we’d be and how we’d handle this situation and that. All of a sudden, we weren’t sure what the future held. We were back to not knowing if we would ever be parents. We realized we would never meet our little baby we had already grown to love… at least not on this earth.
I decided in all of my sadness and heartbreak, and guilt, that I was going to use this experience for good. God had given me something to be able to connect with and hopefully support other women who had gone through this or would go through this. So…I blogged about my experience. I couldn’t believe the amount of love and support that started pouring in as friends, family and strangers started to read my story. I heard story after story of other women who had had miscarriages and gone on to have perfectly healthy children after that. I heard stories of women who had this happen one, two, three, even ten times!!!! Unimaginable! There were some women who I talk to and didn’t even know it had happened to them. There were actually two friends, who both miscarried that same week. If you’ve had a miscarriage, or lost a child, you know all of the uncertainty that brings. You know how much it reminds you of just how fragile life can be, and what a miracle every life is, no matter how small.
Back to last Mother’s Day. We had found out I was pregnant again. We hoped and prayed that we would go on to have a healthy pregnancy and healthy baby. We got up and went to church. It was awkward. Some people said ‘Happy Mother’s Day’, since technically I had had a life inside me and had an angel baby. Some people weren’t sure what to say. I knew I was pregnant but couldn’t say anything and it was so hard since I could tell some people felt sad for me. I wanted to tell them not to worry and that God had blessed us with another pregnancy, but I couldn’t yet. It was just too early still. Although it was early and we hadn’t had an ultrasound yet, we had decided Mother’s Day was the perfect day to tell our mothers the good news because, after all, we would want our family praying for us and this baby and being there to support us no matter what came of this pregnancy. We went to lunch with my mother-in-law and presented her with a picture frame that had THREE (3) cutouts. One had a photo of her grandson and granddaughter, one had a photo of her other grandson, and in the middle was a piece of scrapbooking paper with the letters stamped out that read “Baby Robinson coming january twenty fourteen”. We then went to meet my parents and presented my mom with a card that read, “It is such a grand thing to be a mother of a mother that’s why the world calls her GRANDMOTHER. In January 2014 you’re going to be a grandma!”. Along with the card we presented her with THREE (3) red roses. Keep in mind we did not yet know that there were in fact three little lives growing inside of me. We went on to get our first ultrasound about 3 weeks later and that was when we found out just how much we had been blessed. We were having triplets! You can see the video of our first ultrasound in my blog post where we announced we were pregnant and having triplets here.
This Mother’s Day I want to challenge you to find someone in your life who might be having a hard time with Mother’s Day upon us and bless them. That could mean spending time with them, maybe bringing them a coffee or special treat, it could mean a lot of different things. It doesn’t have to cost a lot or take a lot of time to be special and make their day.
Just to make it extra easy, I’m providing THREE (3) free 8×10 printables to download. Please feel free to download, and gift to someone in whatever way you wish. You could make the image into the front of a card, or frame it so they can hang in on their wall for daily inspiration and encouragement. Have fun and please share your stories of what Mother’s Day means to you or how you were able to bless someone in the comments here or in the comments of this post on Facebook. I can’t wait to read your stories!
These are so beautiful! Thanks for being so open and honest with your own story – that alone is a blessing and is very encouraging! Happy Mother’s Day!