Jan 3,2020 it felt like a normal delivery from what I’ve been told delivery would feel like, contractions and man the back pain. The pain of labor was immediately buffered by that overwhelming and total love that sweeps in the moment a mother holds her baby for the first time. I didn’t expect to feel joy that took me by surprise. Before I could finish wondering why I hadn’t cried, a shadow slipped over me as I said she looks to perfect to have suffered death in my womb. And then reality absent until that point entered , her life’s cry would never come, but I knew this before I delivered her. But to feel this was entirely different.
We held her, her dad and I, sleeping with her for hours. Then we left the hospital empty handed it’s indescribable, the sadness of that feeling so I won’t even write that down. I just recall the rush of new parents proudly exiting the hospital with their new babies strapped into brand new car seats how I do wanted to be among that number. Back home the silence and the walls of our empty house buried me alive each night as flowing milk soaked my skin and my womb still moved from phantom kicks. I would wake in the dark to sounds of cries but she was never there. When I held my baby, she was too small. Too small for this big world, too fragile for life. Her eyes were fused shut, her body limp. She never moved, nor made a sound. And she was cold, so very cold.And she was beautiful, so beautiful.
All I know is that I must survive this new life of sorrow, and even so, it is painful to watch life pass me by without the one person who should be here.
There is no cure for grief, and I do not want to be cured.
I want to be loved as a friend, as family, and as a mother.
My daughter died, but I am still her mother. This vision of motherhood looks nothing like what I expected and hoped for. I do not tote an overflowing diaper bag for her, but I still quietly carry her with me every day.
