There are many ways that I live a privileged life.

I have hot food on the table. A roof over my head. An education. A job. A family that love me. Friends that support me.

Echo:

Celebrations - Sonny Jim's birthday party

And I am a mummy. To a healthy, happy, loving little lad. Who I adore.

And I don’t think I ever feel this particular privilege more acutely than at this time of year. On Mother’s Day.

I waited nine years to hold Sonny Jim in my arms. For many of those years, Mother’s Day was a special kind of torture. Scrolling on social media was something akin to death by a thousand paper cuts.

And I was reminded just how visceral that longing to have a baby was when I visited Wickford’s Bourn Hall Fertility Clinic last week for the launch of their cryopreservation service (egg freezing bank.)

I was lucky enough (privileged) to have IVF on the NHS in order to fall pregnant with my son. Four years on that provision simply doesn’t exist in many places across Essex.

But for those struggling to have a child, advances like this, right here on our doorstep, give those walking the path I trod, hope.

One in seven couples in the UK struggle to conceive. Trust me when I say you know someone. Even if you don’t know it.

So, while I make no apology for revelling in my boy’s Mothering Sunday creations (a footprint butterfly, made at preschool makes my heart melt each time a look at it) I will hold him extra close because I know – I really know – how lucky I am to be able to.

Motherhood is a privilege, perhaps one of the biggest there is. And this is something that all the mums, the step-mums, the not-yet-mums, the should-be-mums, the never-will-be-mums, the angel-baby-mums, all know. In our own ways.

And never does it feel more real than this weekend.

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