The Facts

I am thankful for all the prayers, happy thoughts, and support shown to me.

I am still recovering from the surgery, so this post will be basic – I will write the whole story soon!

The surgery was fine – it went off without a problem.

The doctor found stage 4 Endometriosis (the worst stage).

One tube was blocked, the other one he couldn't see.

The endo is so bad that the bowels are now pressing into my uterus.

To even try to fix it, it will take more surgery with another specialist.

After surgery the chances of me getting pregnant naturally is, at best, 30%

My doctor has put through an “urgent” referral to the next doctor and I should have an appointment date within 2-3 weeks.

I am in shock – it is not what I expected or could have prepared myself for.

I am trying to figure out how to live in a world full of children, knowing that I will probably never have one naturally.

I am healing well and will write more later.

Are We Not All Mothers?

When I was about 20 and attending Young Adults in my home ward, we were asked to put together the yearly Mothers Day program for Sacrament Meeting. I was asked to do a talk about mothers. Simple enough right? But it wasn't simple. During the weeks before my talk I couldn't shake a conference talk from mind by Sheri Dew called: Are We Not All Mothers? I felt drawn to give that talk because I felt a certain empathy for those women in the ward who were not mothers. Not understanding completely why I was compelled to base my talk on that, I followed my feelings and did base my talk on every woman being a mother and being called to help the children that surround her, whether her own or others. Little did I know at that point in my life, that nearly 10 years later I would be one of those women I had such an affinity for.

And now, how I struggle to remember the message I wanted to give to those women!

Luckily, I am surrounded (not figuratively but emotionally) by supportive women who remind me that I can strive to possess those qualities that mothers have.

As I look back at my adult life I can see how special opportunities have been put in my way to work on those qualities and, I have had the unique opportunity to be as close to being a mother as possible, without giving birth. There was wisdom in Gods plan of having me support a friend through adoption. There was wisdom in having friends who had babies first and me being able to support them and be someone they called on when they needed help. There was absolute wisdom in the answer of many prayers (not just mine) of my greatest opportunity to be a nanny for 5 beautiful children whom I loved as much as I could, and subsequently found an amazing friend through that experience, along with a lot of other inspiring people during that time.

I felt that when I left my nanny job, my next step would be having children of my own. Of course, that was what I thought - newly married with an ideal life ahead of me. Little did I know that my "ideal life" was not to be had.

Years went by and no baby came - somehow in my grieving for that dream I had forgotten that I had the ability to love like a mother. Up until just a few days ago, I forgot about that talk that I had felt so prompted to share. I was as good of an auntie as I could be to my gorgeous nieces and nephews but there was a huge amount of detaching myself from them, because they represented my failings as a woman and mother.

But then God provided me with some tender mercies that have struck my heart.

Spending time with my newest niece, Madi (2 months old), and having her mom allow me to comfort her - and being able to sooth her, unlike some of the other mothers in the room.

Conference - and being told that if I was living a righteous life I had no reason to complain about trials.

An amazing email from a special friend that comforted me in ways nothing else could - and helped me remember how I used to feel about children.

And finally today, my sister in law asked me to go with her to get Madi her vaccinations. She doesn't like to be in there when she gets the shots (usually her husband goes) and she asked me. Someone who has no children, and trusted me enough with the baby to be the one to take her.

As I sat there with the small child on my lap, and as she got her shots and cried, but quieted down as soon as I cuddled her and held her in my arms - all those feeling came shooting back to me - I may never have children of my own - but I have the unique opportunity of being a mother to several different children - of that I am grateful and I can never be thankful enough for a moment of inspiration nearly 10 years ago - of the opportunity of giving myself something I really needed now - hope.

Dear Facebook, I Love you... P.S. I hate you!

Admittedly, these last few weeks I have been a bit sensitive about everything and anything that has to do with people getting pregnant or having babies.

I do, at times, HATE the mention of pregnancy or anything in that general category but have become very good at smiling and through gritted teeth saying, "CONGRATULATIONS!!" (or typing through gritted teeth? Is that possible? You know what I mean!)

When there was no Facebook, I would hear on occasion the pregnancy announcements, the pregnancy complaints, and the post baby situations... now that I have a Facebook account it seems that this last month I have been bombarded with all things baby.

I love Facebook for one reason: to keep in touch with my friends that I would normally not. This past month I have SERIOUSLY considered deleting my account because of the status updates I have read.

When it all started I said to Chris, "I am getting around 5 status updates about babies or pregnancy each day and it is driving me crazy." I continued to update Chris every time I got one of those updates and it was becoming excessive (or I was becoming obsessive hmmmm).

The breaking point for me was when a very lovely, deserving friend (I love her!) got married and fell pregnant on her honeymoon, don't get me wrong I am happy for her - I am just more sad for me. I hesitated writing "congrats" on her profile, because honestly I couldn't - I had a bit of a breakdown.

I had to reach deep inside to be able to say that I was happy for her, because I am. Sometimes it just takes time.

I was just getting used to the fact that Facebook is now the new announcing venue, when, I started to get status updates like: "I hate being pregnant!", "Who would EVER want to be pregnant!!" and the like - that was it - I thought, I could either sit there and fume that there are people who JUST DON'T GET IT or I could get rid of the problem - I did the later, I took her off of my friend list.

I am not ignorant - I know pregnancy is difficult (I have been around it enough to KNOW), but right now in my life, I don't want to hear it, not from people I don't really know from High School.

The updates seemed to have slowed down, or maybe I am doing alright with not letting it get to me.

I have grown to know that at this point it is a matter of me trying to find a coping mechanism - the updates are never going away, babies being born are never going to stop and I need to figure out how to deal with it in a productive way.

I better find that coping mechanism fast... my sister in law is having a baby this week, although it wont be an update on Facebook - I bet it is 1,000 times worse!