Happy Mother's Day! (21 weeks)

Firstly - I didn't realise it was Mother's Day today until I signed on to facebook - I thought it was next weekend!  (Sorry Mom!)

In my defence though:
1) it's always next to my birthday, so when it isn't, I get confused
2) Mother's Day in the UK was last month, so there is nothing out to remind me here!

But a little bird (I call facebook) informed me that it was, indeed, today.  So I thought it was a nice time to thank my mother for going through this process for me.

Pregnancy is such a one sided affair... it's exhausting, uncomfortable, and self-sacrificing.  (It's other things as well, obviously, but stay with me on this).  You essentially give your body to another person for forty weeks of your life.  And more than just the physical giving of your body, they take control of your emotions, your sleep, your sex drive, and your free will.  You are no longer allowed to do exactly what you want to do because there is someone else relying on you to do what is best for them, not for yourself.  The phrase "giving of oneself" doesn't even begin to cover how much a mother gives of themselves before their child is even born.

I had two moments this week that made me think.
The first was a letter in the paper where someone was complaining about the assumption that he should give up his seat to a pregnant woman when, after all, "she chose to get pregnant in the first place."  On the surface, this maybe seems like a valid (though poorly communicated) argument.  But I soon realised what issue I took with it.  It's the fact that women choose to be pregnant.  That is not at all the case.  You choose that you would like to have a child of your own.  Pregnancy, and all that comes with it, is the sacrifice you make for that choice, not the choice itself.  Yes, you choose to make that sacrifice - but that doesn't make it any more your fault for having to go through it.  On an extreme level, it is like saying that chemotherapy patients can't complain about how ill it makes them because they have chosen to undergo it.  Just because you choose a goal with the knowledge that the path it takes to get there is an unpleasant one, does not mean you have chosen that path.  It's the goal you chose - the path was given to you without option.  To take up that path is a daunting thing, and for that we should be thankful and not dismissive.

The second was when someone asked me if I was enjoying being pregnant.  I spent so long thinking on that one (not at the time of course, that would be weird) that I could fill a whole blog post just on that subject - and perhaps at one point I will... but the reason for the thoughtfulness is that pregnancy, as a whole, is not an "enjoyable" thing.  Yes, there is SO much about it that you do enjoy, but many of those things are tied into the nature of knowing what it will bring you and what you are doing it for.  If you take all of those factors out of it, I'm not sure if it can be taken in its whole and described as enjoyable.  Just to explain myself - take the baby kicking.  I enjoy feeling it move, because it reminds me that it is a new individual that has its own life.  Because of that, the movement allows me to form a connection of "yes, I can feel you." I enjoy when it kicks a lot, or hard, because it means that it is growing strong and healthy.  If I wasn't emotionally attached to the movement as that of my baby, the actual physicality of something inside of you moving about and kicking you internally is not inherently a pleasant one. In fact, it could easily be the opposite.  Of course, you can't really take those factors out of it.  But coming to that conclusion gives you all the more reason to be thankful to those that have gone through the process for you.  Not just for the fact that they "put up" with the unpleasantness, but for the fact that they loved and wanted you so much that it didn't even seem unpleasant.

And that is what I am most thankful for this Mother's Day.  It is easy to see all the amazing things you have done for me and given me throughout my life, and hopefully you know how thankful I am for those things.  But there is one more thing that I don't think is said enough.  Thank you, Mom, Grandma, Moms/Mums of people I care about and all Mothers ever for being pregnant.  Thank you for sacrificing your body and your life.  Thank you for not resenting how much it cost you, or how uncomfortable it was.  Thank you for seeing me as the goal that was worth the path it took to get it. 

Happy Mother's Day.  I love you.