This House Is Too Quiet.......

I woke up at 6 this morning and my first thought was 'Yaaayyyyy, time to get ready for work' (yep, I'm really sad like that - I LOVE Monday mornings), within a split second I had realised 'Oh, its still Sunday, Yaaayyyy for that' and then..... 'Oh, its THAT Sunday!'

Mother's Day - we meet again... my arch nemesis, that has the ability to render me emotionally incapacitated, simply by just existing. On this day six years ago, I was the Mother without her baby. As the years went on... 'baby' quickly became 'babies' and I find myself laying in bed thinking about the hustle and bustle that should be going on downstairs. This house is too quiet. 

Social Media is awash with Mother's Day posts, people honouring their mothers and partners honouring their children's mother... and rightly so, Mothers are amazing. I have seen a lot of posts from people sending thoughts to those who's Mothers are no longer with them, and I can only imagine that to be as painful as what I am feeling today.  Being a parent is the hardest, but most rewarding job in the world... and in reality, one day isn't really enough.

(I think Lulu just picked up on my thoughts about the house being too quiet... coz she just ran downstairs and set off the burglar alarm...!!!)

I know I am not alone in my dislike of this day. I know that anybody who has lost a child will be feeling that today. Even those who have other children that will make a fuss of them today... there is always that feeling of 'but XXX should be here too'.  The thing is though..... I really want to love this day. I so badly want to be part of the 'Mammy Club' that I hear so many of my friends talk about. I so badly just want to hold my baby in my arms and know that nothing else in this world matters. I want to know why that has been taken from me time and time again. Ten times I have had a baby growing inside me. I've done the morning sickness and the weird cravings, I've heard the heartbeats, I've had countless scans, I've endured more than one hundred hours of active labour.... Ten times I've done this... why do I not even get to have one baby...???



I think what makes today so difficult is that I actually don't know what to do with today. I don't want to go anywhere because I don't want to put myself in a position where I am surrounded by what I am trying to avoid. Every year I tell myself that I want to change my associations with this day. I don't want to be a miserable ball of uselessness. 
When I was with Gordon on Friday, he told me 'Anne-Marie, I think maybe you just need to cry'... I think maybe he was right, because the floodgates opened before I started writing this post, and they are still flowing good and strong. Maybe this is the day that I do just get to cry... for the reasons that we all know... but also, maybe just because I need to. This is the day that I can cry my heart out and nobody will ask 'what's up?'... because everyone already knows. I don't have to explain why I'm sad today... It's just... 'because'.......

I do hope that all of the Mothers out there do have a very special day today, and I hope that all of the people who are missing their Mother today, and all of the Mothers who are missing their babies today... can find some way to just get through the day. 
For everyone that smiles today, there is somebody who is shedding a tear (or ten thousand tears, like me), Maybe some day we too will smile on Mother's day, and through our smiles - just shed one tear (or ten).

I keep reminding myself that it is just one day, and the alarm clock will go off at 6am tomorrow morning and it will be Monday morning and it will be time to get up for work.... Yaaaayyyyyyy...!!!