It's just so hard!
Here's a post I started a few month ago when I was right bang in the middle of the anger... Still applies but not quite so hostile anymore so I thought I would continue it - the old stuff is in italic, the new stuff is normal...
I get so sick of hearing and reading this EVERYWHERE!
My new born baby is waking through the night to feed, its just so hard - yes being tired is hard but you want to know whats really hard? Women waking through the night sobbing because they can't hold their still born babies in their arms or waking up listening out for their ill child to make sure they are still alive - thats hard!
Now don't get me wrong - I know being a Mum is HARD! Its exhausting and emotionally and physically draining and it takes so much of you that sometimes you wonder if there is any of the not-mum you left. But is there anything more rewarding than motherhood? I understand having 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 healthy children is a huge workload - but wanting and not having them is genuinely so much harder. And I'm not feeling sorry for myself here (although I'm sure it probably seems that way). I feel blessed to have my girl and our reproductive challenges have plagued me for only a few months so far. Yes I ache to have the other babies that I've wanted and imagined all my life, to have more than just those little pink 2 lines to remember the baby I lost (and the little phantoms who haunt me as well) but I know women who genuinely have experienced and are experiencing the real hard stuff and it reminds me how lucky I am. One who tried to fall pregnant for years, who endured drugs and hormones and surgeries only to end up having to have a hysterectomy which ended her dream of EVER falling pregnant. Want to tell me your normal pregnancy is hard now? Another who also tried it all and finally after rounds of failed IVFs got her little miracle and now faces the challenge of having to do it all again knowing the prize may never be attained. Want to tell me its hard that you fall pregnant the second you want to and so you have 2 babies now? Another who has 2 beautiful babies but has had more loss than any woman should have to endure and now discovers that that's it - there will be no more babies, her family that she dreamt of will never be complete. Oh its so hard having 4 healthy kids is it? Women who have had healthy babies born, to then have those healthy babies get sick or worse. Want to complain about that extra feed ur baby woke up for last night now? And then there are the women who have fallen pregnant easily, had reasonably smooth sailing through pregnancies that have ended in the births of healthy babies - and perhaps because they haven't had the other hard stuff they tend to get a little too hung up on how everything in motherhood "is just so hard!". And when you've had a little taste of hard and would desperately love to be walking in their shoes its just so hard not to resent them and it hurts that things just aren't very fair in the real world. I'm sure there are plenty of women who think I'm mean writing and thinking this, that I'm a judgemental bitch, that I'm bitter and angry and jealous and don't deserve any happiness because of it and they may very well be right but I used to be on the other side and now I'm not and I wish the worst thing about being pregnant would be my aching back and pelvis - instead I have the aching back and pelvis from the hormones of 3 'pregnancies' in the past 6 months and nothing to make that pain worthwhile.
jodi x
