I often say that after a visit to/from my mother that I want to join the witness protection program and just disappear. My mother is that stressful.
The bottom line is that my mother is an alcoholic who is incapable of thinking beyond herself and providing me with any amount of support. I don't think she's ever asked me once in the three years of IF how I feel or how I am dealing with it. Everything is about HER. A lot of people have hurt me and let me down throughout this process, but she is the queen. A few highlights from the weekend:
- My mother is two glasses of wine into the afternoon (it's about 3pm) when our friends K&G stop by with their 2-month-old. They visited for about an hour, which was nice. My mother made their baby a dress. K is sitting on the couch with her baby on her chest, and the baby is out cold. She's in that kind of frog position. My mother is sitting next to K and says, "See, she knows. She knows her mommy and knows that is where she lived for 9 months." Husband and I are sitting there stunned. After all, no children of ours will come from my body. What will that make me? Not the mother? Of course, it never occurred to my mother that her BARREN daughter who is working with a surrogate might be bothered by that comment or that maybe that comment wouldn't apply to me. And coward that I am, I said nothing.
- Five or six glasses of wine into the evening: "I still hope that one day, after you have a baby via surrogacy, that you will get a surprise pregnancy." OMFG. Are you kidding me? I replied, "Mother, that's not going to happen. I am barren. I am STERILE. My only tube was cauterized. It would truly be a miracle if I were to get pregnant without treatment...a genuine miracle."
Maybe she felt a little embarrassed or some memory of exactly what was done to me during my laparoscopy tickled the reptilian brain that is all she has left because then she moved on to her favorite game of Blame My Father (my parents are divorced): "well, it must have come from your father's side of the family because no one in my family has it." I finally realized that she meant endo. I patiently told her that 1) I don't think that endo can be inherited that way (my father's sister had endo). I could be wrong but I seriously doubt the endo came from him. Women with UUs often develop endo due to flow issues. I then reminded her that endo isn't my only problem, and that I have a unicornuate uterus which is a big problem. Which allowed her to wring her hands and declare that she often wonders whether she did anything wrong when she was pregnant with me that caused this. Right, because it's all about her.
THEN she tells me that she's thought a lot about it and maybe it's a trade off. I have no uterus, but I'm super smart. WTF? And I remind her that I DO have a uterus; it's just not fully developed. And anyway, what a consolation. Gee, I'm smart and that certainly makes up for NOT having a working uterus. - Hopelessly slurry at this point: Sighs my mother, "You used to look like me and have my body type, but now you look just like your father's side of the family." Which clearly is not a compliment. I asked her what she meant, and she told me that the women in her family have little bird arms and legs and put weight on only in their stomach. I'm built bigger and have bigger, more solid legs
- Oh, and my mother's newest hobby and possible business venture? Making baby clothes. Hand-sewn and embroidered, beautiful baby clothes. Talk about torture. And within 5 minutes of their arrival, she told me that she knew I would have a boy, and she wouldn't be able to make anything cute for it.
So that's a snapshot of my weekend with my mother. She's so excited about surrogacy, and she's so generous at times, but she can be so damned insensitive. She wonders why I don't visit more and why I'll never move back to my hometown and I think it's pretty obvious. I wish to god I had a better support system. I wish I had a mother I could count on and trust with my raw, fragile psyche. I wish that I wasn't an only child and had a sister with whom I could commiserate over my mother's awful behavior. Maybe I wouldn't feel so alone and unloved.
