(This is something I wanted to share, so I made a blog. Will I keep writing here? Who knows! I'll let you know if I do.)
Mothering without our Mothers
Mothering without our Mothers
When I discovered I was pregnant with my third child, I went
into a bit of a shock. I worried a lot. I worried about the age different
between my other kids, who will be 5 and 7 when the baby comes; I worried about
money; I worried that friends and family would think 3 kids was overboard; I
worried about further delaying my re-entry in the workforce; I worried about
how big our car was; I worried about how I would cultivate a winter garden; I
worried about another round of stretching and birthing on my body. But all of
these worries were a distraction
-- at my core, I knew my real worry, my real pain. My mother died when
my 2nd baby was 6 months old, which meant that I would have to go
through this pregnancy and birth without her.
The thought of enduring a pregnancy, birth, and postpartum
period without my own mother was so painful I lay awake at night wishing away
the pregnancy. I did not wish for a miscarriage, but to travel back in time and
prevent the conception, to stop this pain at its source. I sobbed by myself,
thinking of the pep talks she would not give me, of the meals she would not
cook for me, and the footrubs I would never get.
After a period of mourning I began to accept the pregnancy,
to share in my family’s excitement about it, to revel in my growing belly that
was beginning to tell my secret to the world. We went on a vacation to a lake
and I bought a bikini, embracing the belly and giving it room to grow. I was 13 weeks pregnant, finally feeling
ready to be pregnant as my second trimester began.
That night I saw my mom in my dreams. I was grocery shopping
and turned an aisle to see her there, smiling. She beckoned me over and said,
“Don’t forget this,” then whispered something into my ear. I don’t know what
she said, and I woke with a deep yearning for her words, but also with the
incredible comfort of having seen her face.
The next day as I sat on the dock and splashed my feet at
the fish, I felt wetness beneath me and looked down to see myself sitting in a
puddle of my own blood. My mother in law, who is a midwife, looked at the blood
with a blanched face and called it “a considerable amount,” and I assumed I was
having a miscarriage. We drove 25 minutes to the nearest small town hospital,
where an ultrasound showed, much to our surprise, that the fetus was viable and
had a good heartbeat. I was actively bleeding in two places in my uterus, and
was told that my chances of miscarrying were 50/50.
I’m not much of a mystical person, but I do believe I saw my
mom in my dream the night before to prepare me for this day. To refill me with the sense of her
presence, so I could hold it close to me as a trembled in a strange hospital
bed wondering if my pregnancy was over.
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| Photo by Jade Beall Photography |
I went back to our lake cabin and waited. Waited for the
blood to start again, waited to lose the baby I had only just accepted. My
pooching belly was no longer a round sign of a growing baby, but a constant
reminder of a pregnancy in jeopardy. I tried an air of acceptance – I’ve known
many friends who have miscarried, and my role editing a birth journal has
brought me across many, many stories of pregnancy loss – but statistics mean
nothing when you are waiting for it to happen to you. And I came to realize,
for the first time, how much I wanted this pregnancy to make it, how much I
wanted this baby to keep growing and stay with me. And when my son came up to
my belly and said, “Hang in there, baby,” I knew I could do it, if I had to,
without my Mom.
We all need to be mothered, especially as we journey on the
path of motherhood ourselves. We can only continue to nurture and love if our
own vessels are being filled, if our own bodies and souls are being nourished.
For some, that nourishment will come from our own mothers; for many of us, that
nourishment will come from one another, from the village in which we find a
home, from our partners and from our children. When my son places his hands on
my belly and says, in awe, “Mom, you have two hearts beating in your body right
now,” I am filled. When my daughter falls asleep to the rhythm of baby kicks
under her hand, I am filled. When I lean on my friends, when we laugh and cry
together, we are nourished. We are
mothered.
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| Photo by Jade Beall Photography |
