Mother’s Big Love

When it comes to love, nothing is bigger than a mother’s big love.

There are few friends who remain close to our hearts no matter how far we travel from them.

Those are the friends who we might now see for years, sometimes decades, and yet when we do eventually meet again, we are able to pick up on our last conversation where we last left it.

I am fortunate to have a few of those gems in my life, some who have traveled with me, some who simply were a match from the instant we met; I often wondered if we had been born into different families simply by mistake.

Joy expands to a million when I learn that one of these special beings in my life is expecting a little cherub. Imagine when the cherubs are two?? Imagine that mother’s big love getting so big it can envelop the sky!

This has been the best news in my household in the last couple of days. I am so excited that I can barely sleep, but as a doula, I do need to find my zen and fellow mama’s lead, and even more so if one of my friends comes to me for advice.

Right now I do sense a lot of fear around her, not so much because of the unknown factor of having to dive into a completely new experience, rather because what the doctors are telling her is fear-based and her maternal instinct has already kicked in at full force.

I know that no matter what the outcome will be, no matter the shape this birth will take, she is already the perfect mom for these two babies and I do hope that she will realize that once she can surround herself with all the possible information available to her and make the best-informed choice with what she hasBut why is there such a huge discrepancy between medical school midwifery practices?

Yes, the two curricula differ in time, notions, beliefs, or lack of, but most and above all, they are different in the way they treat mothers. What never changes is a mother’s big love!

I find it appalling that despite what one may believe should be the best and safest way to give birth, mothers are often still treated like a number, like a case, an emergency that needs to be fixed, adjusted, controlled, saved.

This is clearly demonstrated when mothers are often told by someone else (often someone who won’t ever be able to give birth because they are men! Talk about Mother’s big love right there!) how they should behave during their motherhood journey, what choices they should make when they are bringing their children earthside and how they should take care of them once they take them home.

It’s a battle against history, common sense, and nature because the truth is that no matter how denigrating or elevating the experience of birth turns out to be, you can not stop a mother from being a mother.

I would love to raise a glass to all moms to be, not yet, and missed and to every mother’s big love.

I would love for you to go back and remember how you felt when you thought about your babies(ies), whether you had them in your belly already or in your happy thoughts, remember how everything made sense, there was no questioning, no fear as you knew exactly that all you deeply and wanted to do most was to love your baby.

Stay with that feeling and carry it with you in your heart. No one will ever be able to change that because no one can ever love your baby stronger than you.

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