I now understand the lingering impatience of women who are about to give birth. Tummy hurting and skin stretched. Pelvic burning and the struggle to turn sides. My child is due any day now and I find myself fantasizing of birth and our hello. My hair is scruffy and my self care limited to a minimum to get through the day, whoever once said that women could have a pregnancy glow is batshit crazy. Or maybe he or she forgot to mention that the sleep deprivation might have a run with that glow of yours in the final weeks.
I cannot believe how big this kid is. And you are actually seeing the ‘pretty side’ of my tummy as my left side is WAY worse in terms of stretch marks since he enjoys stretching himself on my left side, stretching my skin along with it. Scarred and yet I don’t give a rats ass about it at this point as both my body and mind endured so so much more. I have sheltered two beautiful babies in two years and that is my biggest accomplishment to date.
Our home is ready for his homecoming and our souls are purged of anything but having that as a goal. We eat, sleep and speak baby. Fantasizing about his personality and perks, how life is going to be with a newborn at home. I need to refrain myself from crying when I try to picture myself catching my boy after birth, looking into his eyes that are open while his sisters eyes remained closed forever. The only thing I fear is losing myself in that moment. When all the hurt and weakness that have been hidden in our closet of death will come back to share us it’s final blow before forming this beautiful yet painful circle of love…and loss.
I have been working on finding a new identity for myself. I have been a loss mom for a long time and I desperatly needed to find other parts of myself to go along with it. I’m not just a loss mother.. I am also a blogger, a painter and photographer, a loving person and a strong willed soul. And now I am also a mother without the word ‘loss’ in front of it. I am still a lover to a beautiful man and even a fur-mommy to my two cats. I have remained to be still so much more then just heartbroken. And I kept blogging about it so I could go back and read for myself that all of this is true. I still get thank you letters from all over the world from mothers who are going through the same, Today I had one of Qatar.. And that is exactly WHY I blog about our journey. To both remind me and others that this isn’t the end.
This is the beginning…
Love, S.
Absolutely beautiful–you and this piece. Thinking of you in the coming days. I can’t wait to hear that baby boy is here, safe and sound!
To our surprise our rainbow boy has blue eyes (dad’s are brown) and looking into hem while he is laughing gives me the best feeling in the world! But yes, thinking about my daughter’s eyes also makes me cry….
The first days with my son (1 year and 2 weeks after our little girl was born) were an emotional rollercoaster and only after a week the fact that I had a healthy son in my arms started to feel real. Only afterwards I realized how stressed I had been during this pregnancy, that I constantly was checking whether he was still moving inside and it took a while to start feeling a bit like the ‘normal’ me. Since his birth I have enjoyed each single day, also the ones with very little sleep and lots of crying :-). Sometimes I feel really sad to miss my girl but knowing she gave life to our little boy makes him extra special. Good luck with the last weeks (and no I’m not going to say you should enjoy them, cause I know what it feels like when you have been waiting impatiently for so long)