It's not a want, it's a need.

I have on occasion had people ask me why I continually buy things for Cora or do things in her memory, and it's so hard to explain.  These people usually leave me angry, because there's usually a "you should focus on the children you have with you," thrown in there somewhere.

Truth is, something magical happens when a woman conceives: she becomes a mother.  It doesn't happen when the baby is born, it happens at the beginning of the pregnancy.  Those same people would acknowledge the fact that yes, I am Cora's mother, but they really still don't understand.

We have millions of years of racial instinct evolved in us.  That instinct prepares a woman to take care of an infant when the pregnancy ends.  And it's not just an infant either, but to rear the child to adulthood and then help care for their babies.  It's a driving force that instinct.  

When Cora was born, my body acted as if I had that infant to care for.  My milk came in, among other things, as if I had a baby to feed.  That was the only thing, though.  Everything in my being had been preparing to care for an infant that wasn't there.  I am her mother, but I can't be her mother.  I need to mother her, and it's almost physically painful that I can't.  Like any other instinct you have, it's hard to ignore.

So I buy trinkets and collect pictures of her name.  Does that mean that I ignore her siblings, or don't appreciate them?  No, because I mother them every day.  I feed them, change them, clothe them, clean them, talk to them, cuddle with them, comfort them, play with them.  Every minute they are awake, I am fulfilling my instinctual obligation toward them, and loving every minute of it (even the hard ones).

But that doesn't erase the instinct to mother Cora.  And I can't do any of those things for her that I just listed off for her siblings.  Oh how I want to, though.  How I NEED to.  It's built into me on a chemical level.