I had to post about this because I just don't understand. I have told several people that I do not want to celebrate mother's day this year and if any of my close friends or family call and wish me a happy mother's day, I will shoot them. My son's due date was May 10th, Mother's day is May 9th (in the US). Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit, but I can almost guarantee that my family will forget what Aiden's due date was.

I think it is perfectly resonable to not want to be reminded that I am the mother to a dead baby the day before he should have been here. (I know due dates are just a guess but my daughter was born on hers so it has more significance for me.) When I told my friends not to call me, they acted shocked. They think I should still celebrate because of my living daughter. If my daughter was old enough to understand and wanted to give me something, that's different, but people calling me for mother's day and NOT for the due date is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I would think that people would understand that someone who lost a baby might not want to hear about Mother's day. I am a little angry about people's reactions. I guess it goes back to that whole "you should be over it by now" crap. Why the hell should I be over it?! He wasn't even supposed to be BORN yet. Not to mention that all mother's grieve for their dead children for the rest of their lives - how do people not get this?

I know I'm projecting, and I know it's still a long time to mother's day, but that's kind of the point. No one has given me cause to think they will remember Aiden's due date (they don't call me now) and it IS such a damn long time until he was supposed to be here. I'm thinking about this a lot today because of my brother's birthday and valentines day last week, and my birthday is coming up. I don't want to celebrate, people! My baby is dead!!!

Jen, my due date was May 8th, the day before Mother's Day, so I understand how emotionally charged that day will be. I am seeing a grief counselor and she told me to start thinking, now, about how we want to spend that day. For a moment, I considered going away with my husband for the weekend, just to try to escape everything. However, I have two living daughters and, for me, I want to be able to spend the day with them. In a weird way, it feels even more important to me to celebrate being their mother. I think the loss of Juliet has shown me just how fragile the whole process is, which makes me even more grateful to have my two kids. However, it is also very important to me that, as a family, we find a way of honoring Juliet on that day. Even though she is gone, I am her mother, too. Honoring that is just as important to me as honoring the fact that I am a mother to my living girls.

All that being said, these are only MY thoughts and feelings about Mother's Day. I can completely understand where you are coming from. It is so unfair to be expected to celebrate motherhood when one of your children is gone. I think it is great that you are being direct with the people in your life about what you want. They should respect your wishes, regardless of how they may feel. Grief is a highly individual process. No two people will experience it in the same way. It is not up to other people to decide what is right for you. Only you know what is best... and that is what you should do.

No matter what you plan on doing that weekend, just be kind to yourself and remember that your son is very lucky to have you as his mother.

SCM is right, your grief is yours and you can do whatever you want with it. And if that means skipping Mother's Day, then that's what you should do. i'm sorry both you and SCM have to have your due date so close to Mother's Day. I'm not far from you both, as my due date is April 30th. I haven't even thought far enough ahead in my own mess to register when Mother's Day is...I practically forgot about Valentine's Day too.

(My pregnancy mentioned, so feel free to skip if this seems inappriate, I sincerely don't mean it to be)

I feel the same way you feel about people calling for Mother's Day and not for Aiden's due date...but feel it toward my baby shower. My friends always planned to throw me a shower for my twins. With Will's loss, the subject was dropped...but my friend encouraged me the other day to consider still having one. Long story short, I told my dh last night that before Will died I was going to do much hemming and hawing over who to invite (as you know, there's always complications with that sort of thing). But now I have a very easy criteria: I do not want you there to celebrate Abby if you weren't there to mourn Will. It's cut my list down some, and honestly I'm glad for that.

Would you consider doing something on Aiden's due to honor him that you could include friends and family in? I am planning to do something for Will at the shower, just not sure yet. I considered having people release balloons, or maybe bringing a shell or stone to put under Will's memorial tree, or I have no idea what else. But I guess it's me 'forcing' myself on the celebration that I have no intentions to forget Will or pretend that he didn't exist...like it or not.

I understand your feelings about Mother's Day, and just want to tell you it doesn't make you a bad mother to your daughter or selfish or anything else that your friends and family might be implying. It just means you're hurting and mourning your son, as you welll should be allowed to do.

Mother's Day is such a sticky mine-field subject. Last year, I was newly pregnant with Gabe, and adament that there was to be no celebration for me. I did not consider myself a mother, despite being on pregnancy #4. Everybody feels so differently - I remember being amazed by the number of women on the after-loss boards I occasionally visited who were upset that people didn't do things for them and I had a difficult time empathizing, because I simply viewed myself in other terms.

But Gabriel made me a mother. So now I feel stuck. I don't know what to do, if anything. I'm not, in general, fond of greeting-card-manufactured holidays. So if my husband gives me a card, that's cool. But other than that, no fuss necessary.

But that's me. You have a much larger complicating factor going on, with the due date right there next to it all. I think you have every right to celebrate or not celebrate as you choose. You have to do what feels right to you, in the end. People will either try to understand or they won't, but ignore them and do what is best for you.

Thanks for letting me vent. SCM - we are actually planning to do something to honor Aiden's due date. We were planning on going camping in the Appalachian mountains with our daughter and spreading some of his ashes on the highest peak in Georgia. It's not really that I don't want an acknoledgment of being a mother, its that I think people will call on Sunday and say, "Happy Mother's Day!", completely forgetting that Monday will be a hard day for me. Thank you for your thoughts - it helped me think through why I feel this way and clarify my thoughts.

Eve - what a beautiful idea about the baby shower. If I was there I would definitely find a way to honor both Will and Abby. You just gave me an idea that will fix my main problem. I will just send out a letter to everyone that might call me and ask them to do something to honor Aiden on his due date. I think I will also link or copy one of the sites that tells family and friends what a bereaved mother needs (like not ignoring the loss). Thank you!

Eliza - I believe that just being pregnant makes you a mother, although I realize not everyone may feel that way. I hope you find something that you are comfortable and happy with in regards to mother's day - even if that means ignoring it. I'm also not into Hallmark holidays, but I did want some kind of acknowledgement after I had my daughter.

I'm so glad you are going to 'teach' people how to honor Aiden. I think it's a wonderfully healthy and procative thing to do.

In 2007, I was on the verge of being a mother on Mother's Day. My son was born a couple of weeks later. By Mother's Day 2008, he had died. I knew I was a mother and yet I had no child and I didn't quite know what to do with that. I dreaded Mother's Day. I had to flee the grocery store after accidentally walking in the card aisle and being assaulted with the Mother's Day cards. I think I skipped church that Sunday.

I wouldn't normally wish my friends a happy Mother's Day, and I suspect that most of my friends wouldn't have either, but several emailed me or sent a card or in some way acknowledged that I was a mother, though a very sad one. I was really touched by their gestures.

Maybe it helped that I had no expectations except that it would be hard day. Maybe it helped that I had no living children so any comment that was made had to acknowledge my motherhood and my loss. Maybe it is just where I was in my journey or how I grieve. Whatever it was, I'm thankful for the people who acknowledged Mother's Day for me that first year.

It is a hard day, certainly made even harder by the timing for you. I hope your friends honor your wish.

My baby girl died in July 2008. Mother's Day 2009 was one of the worst days of my life. My mother-in-law had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer, so we were not permitted to pass the day quietly alone, but had to dance attendance at her bedside (she was not remotely ill enough to be confined to bed) while each of the extended family blurted out some mawkish sentiment about motherhood, and witness her oozing all over my husband's ex-wife about what a wonderful mother she is to their son (she isn't, but that's another story). Naturally not a single person had anything to say in recognition of our loss.

Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday) is 12th March in the UK. We bought cards for our mums and grandmas tonight. It felt like a kick in the teeth but... I can't refuse to acknowledge them.

As always, this sucks.

I don't know what will be worse. If anyone acknowledges the day to me wrt the baby we lost. Or if they don't.