Thoughts on the third pregnancy, and mothering without my mother...

(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

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 2^nd 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.

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.

Photo by Jade Beall Photography