What it's like to be pregnant without a mom
by Maggie Downs posted in Life
This is not a feel-good story about how I got pregnant and developed a deeper bond with my mother. It's not about all the text messages we sent or how I called my mom at all hours to ask questions about pelvic pain and morning sickness.
I wish it were that story.
Unfortunately, my mom died in 2011, three years before my son was a reality.
There are a lot of things I wish, but probably the biggest one is that I could have experienced pregnancy with my mom by my side. And it was something I never thought about until the hole was already there.
Suddenly the woman who brought me into the world and nurtured me into life ? the woman who sweetened my oatmeal with mashed strawberries and rocked me to sleep in the ugliest, 1970s yellow rocking chair ? was no longer with me.
When my mom died, essential things died with her. All the memories of my birth and early childhood, all her advice about pregnancy, any pearls of wisdom about motherhood ? they disappeared the day she drew her last breath in hospice. She was gone before I ever thought to capture any of this information. (I don't even know if I was born vaginally or via c-section.)
What this means is that pregnancy felt like a very solitary experience. I had my husband and friends, of course, but nobody else had a history of the body like my mom and me. I look into the mirror and I see her ? I live with her stately nose and her pale complexion, even her stubbornly jiggly upp...
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