Target and Motherhood

Last Friday I was at Target buying diaper wipes for our trip, and it just hit me how much I felt like a mother standing there in the aisle. Part of me wondered, do I belong here? There are mothers all around me, buying diapers and formula and diaper rash medicine. But the sign that they are mothers is more definitive, they have babies with them.

Here I stand alone, do they know I am buying these for myself, not for someone else?

Do I believe I am buying them for myself?

After so much loss and so much hope and then more loss, there is a part of me that feels this is pretend. I have gone through the motions before- prepared a whole nursery for our Rose whom we almost adopted. Had showers and gifts given. We discussed with the birthmom that Rob would cut the umbilical cord, and that the birthmom would bring the clothes for the baby to wear home from the hospital.

And yet, this is different....DNA test have been done, birthmom consent has been made. To all others it probably seems so clear that Samuel will be ours. For me that is slowly becoming more real. I hadn't realized how much I was moving through motions that he will be ours- cognitively knowing that, but a small part of me still prepared for the No to crash in (as in my previous post of my poem).

Standing in the diaper aisle at Target was a step in that direction. A step into motherhood. It was hard to pick out diaper wipes through my blurry eyes. I am a mother I kept saying to myself. I am a mother.

I have been a mother for almost seven years. Children that I carried in my womb...a total I think of 55 weeks. And I have offered life to many people and gone through pain to have dreams borne. I have learned perserverance and patience. And I know I have been a mother and that God has taught me and gifted me with those experiences.


But in Target, in the diaper aisle.....I became a mother again. And I'm beginning to believe it.