Defining Motherhood: a guest post by Kelly

I have been a long time blog reader of Kelly McCaleb and I am thrilled that she agreed to guest post for me (like, did a happy dance in my chair.)  I love her blog for so many reasons, but I have been particularly drawn to her complete honesty about her secondary infertility because I experienced it myself. She is refreshing and real and celebratory of the sweet things in life. I just adore what she is about to share...

A Mother Who Longs To Be A Mother

I have been trying to get pregnant for 7 years. But don’t feel sorry for me, I have a beautiful 7 year old daughter who made me a mother coming exactly 10 months after my husband and I were married. She was easy to bring to the earth, and has given me a duty every day to nurture and care for the fruit of my womb.

It is difficult to handle the conflicting emotions of secondary infertility. On one hand, you long and hope and pray and feel incomplete and broken. On the other hand, you feel blessed and full of love and completely enraptured with the child of God trusted into your care. It’s a difficult balance of trying to enjoy every moment with one child, while mourning the “loss” of the other children you feel in your heart but never in your belly.

Inevitably, the decision must be made when and if adoption is right for you. In the case of secondary infertility, where your body has proven it can carry a healthy pregnancy, conceived without fertility treatments no less, the question becomes agonizingly hard to decide: when do you stop focusing your energy on readying your body to house a miracle and begin looking for your baby elsewhere?

If you haven’t experienced this tug of emotion, this mourning for the loss of your fertility, this sense of defeat- you cannot possibly understand how complex these feelings are. Often I am told, just because you choose to adopt doesn’t mean you are giving up on bearing your own children. These well meaning folk don’t understand the level of emotional stress and total tunnel vision required to pursue either path. It’s a lot. That’s all I can say, it’s a lot.

And I’ll be extra honest, and admit my human frailty. When you have your own child- who displays your husband’s sprinkles of freckles, your sensitivity, his temper, your spiritual nature, his sense of humor… when you are in love with all of those things a serious dark doubt comes to your mind of your ability to love another’s child as much as your own. I’m told, and I do believe, that this is a non-issue, however common the fear. When you hold that adopted baby for the first time, I’m told, you know. You just know.

So this is where I live. In the uncertain world where an already mother wonders if she’ll ever mother again. Each day wondering if this will be her only 2nd grade class she’ll ever make a teacher appreciation door for, the only child she’ll drag to piano lessons. It’s a world where many people have it all figured out for you, but you know you need to feel the answer, be prompted of the next move, feel when to fight and when to relax, in your own heart.

Those answers can be hard. In my experience they can be uncomforting words like: patience.

Something deep in me tells me I’ll be a mother again. So my job right now? Enjoy every second that I have my little girl all to myself. We’re pretty lucky to have this time together.

Yes, lucky is a good way to look at it.