The other day, I sat across the table from my friend, in deep conversation over her fears that she might never become a mother. I found myself saying these words to comfort her: ?The thing is, once you open your heart up to becoming a mother, even before you hold the baby in your arms or carry it in your body, in that very instant, you become a mother.?
As I said these words, I realized I wasn?t just saying them to her; I was saying them to myself, because I needed to give myself permission to admit that I was a mother, too?not only to the child I had carried successfully into this world but also to the one that I hadn?t.
I am the mother of a beautiful, healthy four-year-old boy named James. But I am also the mother of a baby girl who died at 20 weeks. This statement?that I am a mother of two?hasn?t been an easy one to come to. When my body finally decided to let her go, I woke up in the middle of the night bleeding, feeling in my gut, before the ultrasound confirmed it, that I had lost her. The experience came with trauma and memories that I am still processing to this day: how it felt to lie awake all night in the hospital after I was told my baby had died, waiting until the next day to undergo a C-section to deliver her because of complications with the placenta. It was so strange, those hours, knowing that she was no longer alive but I was still carrying her inside of my body, allowing me the illusion of her life just a little while longer. I remember the way the skin ...