I wouldn't consider myself to be a superstitious person, but there was something about celebrating motherhood because I was a mom that made me feel like I was putting the cart before the horse. The totally irrational side of me felt like I would be jinxing my chances at becoming a mom if I celebrated too soon.

I technically wasn't a mom yet, so why would I be celebrating myself as if I was? To me, Mother's Day is for moms, not "women who would give their right arm to become a mom," like me. Just because I wanted to experience motherhood so badly didn't mean I should celebrate it as if I already had.

Again, I don't want to judge anyone for how they cope with wanting to be a mom and not being one yet. That is totally up to you. However,I felt like it would be a bit tacky for me to celebrate Mother's Day when I had nothing to show for it yet. That said, I did totally love when my mom friends and family mentioned that they appreciated how maternal I was to their children. Sort of acknowledging my motherhood-in-training was a boost on an otherwise hard day.

Me celebrating my wish to be a mom makes you celebrating your actual motherhood seem a little less important, and that's definitely something I never wanted to do.

I wasn't doing anything until that baby came into our family, which I know is a little different than what other women who are waiting to be moms choose to do. I refused to buy a single onesie or blanket until I actually had my baby in my home. Which, in hindsight, might not have been the most practical route since we found out our daughter was arriving six hours before we met her and we were totally unprepared. But still, I couldn't have prepared a nursery not knowing for sure if we wouldn't have to take it all apart one day.

Before I became a mom, I tried to focus on celebrating my own mom and what she had done for me over the years. In fact, she was still doing things for me and supporting me through infertility when I didn't always feel I had other people to talk to about it, so that's definitely worth celebrating.

Until it really, truly happened, I couldn't guarantee I was ever going to become a mom. I have friends who have wanted to become parents for decades and have now come to terms with the fact that it won't happen. I knew that could very well be my future, too.

So while I felt I would become a mom one day, it wasn't a sure thing and I just couldn't celebrate until it was a done deal.

I knew that if someone said, "Happy Mother's Day!" to me, on the grounds that I'd be a mother "one day," it would sound nothing short of condescending. Not celebrating as a mom until I became a mom was an easy way around that problem.