Repressed feelings

I frequent a message board where all the women there are expecting and due around the same time as I am. There have been a lot of posts recently about baby showers and it has gotten me thinking about my baby shower. I’m very grateful to the lady who threw it for me, I hardly knew her but yet she still planned this wonderful gathering to celebrate my first child it warms me that a practical stranger would do this for me but at the same time I still find myself (4 years later) feeling very sad about it. I’m still sad that no one who knows me and was close to me was willing to have one for me. Not even my own mother or best friend! When I was expecting my second child I figured there would be no such celebration and there wasn’t. Which is fine cause not everyone feels like I do in that every child deserves a celebration but it still makes me sad too. Now that I’m expecting my third I'm certain there will be no celebration which I guess is fine cause really I don’t “need” anything. For me though it’s not about the gifts, it’s about the celebration . . . it’s about those close to me caring about me and my babies enough to want to make us feel special and celebrated . . . on the message board I have been seeing posts about girls having not one but two and three little celebrations for their second, third and one lady her fourth child and I’m so happy for them but I can’t help but wonder how it feels to be made to feel so cared about and special enough to be celebrated by those closest to you. Growing up I was never given a single birthday party so you’d think I’d be used to not being celebrated . . . but, it still dissapoints me . . . I wonder if maybe it’s the reason I had planed on not telling anyone when this little one is born. I have no plans to call and inform my family until after I'm home. In fact I never even really announced to anyone I was expecting again . . . I know many women don’t have showers at all but if I knew them I would plan one for them cause even if no gift is given having a celebratory tea party with the girls in your life to honor the coming baby is important and fun IMO . . .