Pregnant Women Are Moms Too, And They Deserve To Be Celebrated On Mother’s Day
When most of us think of Mother’s Day, we think of our own moms or of women in our lives who’ve mothered and mentored us along the way. As time marches on and our definition of family changes and expands, so too does the idea of Mother’s Day and the people we celebrate on that holiday. One group that often gets overlooked in all the commotion is expectant moms.
Becoming a mom for the very first time is a huge transition. You have no idea what to expect or how to really prepare. You’re stuck in limbo between your old life and the one you’re about to start living. It can feel weird to think about celebrating or being celebrated as a mom when you haven’t met your baby yet and you have no real experience under your belt, but make no mistake about it: you’re definitely a mom.
Pregnancy requires a lot of the same things that will be expected of you once your baby is actually born: commitment, energy, hard work, sacrifice. You give up certain things and add in others, you do work researching and preparing, you risk your own health, you make hard decisions, and put yourself at the mercy of medical experts and the desperate hope that everything will end up okay. Whether you realize it or not, all of those things are examples of you functioning and sacrificing like a mom.
For me, celebrating Mother’s Day while I was five months pregnant with my first child was one of the first times it really sunk in just how much my life was about to change. I had already dealt with a lot of emotions about being pregnant, but even with that it still didn’t feel quite real that it was happening. I remember going to brunch with my own mom and mother-in-law that Mother’s Day not expecting anything and instead getting showered with love and gifts. It was a great acknowledgement of everything I’d gone through up to that point and a great reminder that no matter what happened, I’d already taken a step into mom territory and was already forever changed by the process of carrying a child.
Celebrating Mother’s Day during pregnancy is not a requirement, but it’s also not something we should frown on. There are many ways to be a mom and many different paths pregnancy and motherhood can take. The absence or presence of an infant should not preclude one from being considered a mother. If anything, we should hold each other up and appreciate the unique journey each mom takes in getting to where she is. ‘Mother’ has many definitions, and pregnant women definitely count.
(Photo: Osokina Liudmila / Shutterstock)
