Mother’s Day: For the Mothers Who Have Lost
By Frances Mapemba-Burke
Two years ago, I’ll admit that I had frowned at my sister who was five months pregnant, wondering why her friend had sent her a Mother’s Day card when her baby wasn’t born yet.
One year ago, I was hormonal, pregnant with my first child and low key mad at my husband for not buying me flowers for Mother’s Day. Because I’d finally understood. You become a mother before your child has made an entrance into this world. When you’re pregnant, and in some cases even before that. You’re a mother.
Mother’s Day last year was a celebration. I was ten weeks pregnant and fast approaching the end of the first trimester, which had already been an ordeal both mentally and physically. I’d began to experience what I now know was pre-natal anxiety almost from the very start. I was convinced that something would go wrong. There had been some scares during that time, and a whole lot of worry and trauma. Suffice to say, those two months had been a rollercoaster, and I quickly understood what people mean when they say motherhood is a lifetime of worry. But I was beginning to feel the hope getting stronger, and so that beautiful spring day, my husband and I decided to tell both of our mums the good news. It finally felt like it was happening at that moment. Seven months from then, I would join the ranks. I’d be a mother.
Except I was already, wasn’t I? The sleepless nights shrouded in worry, the protective hand on my stomach every waking hour. The plans, the dreams, the way every single detail of my future had been re-wired in an instant. My job as a flight attendant meant that from the moment I saw those two pink lines on a stick, I’d called work immediately and was grounded. My entire life changed direction in that moment. The job I’d loved became unimportant. Nothing else in this world mattered except that little hope of a baby. And so it dawned on me. No woman who worries that deeply about their child – the kind of worry that seeps right into your bones and fills every single cell in your body – could not be a mother.
So what was it, two years ago, that had made me not understand my sister’s Mother’s Day card? I feel like a fool now because that was her first Mother’s Day. The one where her body was busy creating her child and her mind was already imagining a future with him. Now, I understand that I had been sucked into this unspoken societal belief that we are only mothers once our babies are born. It’s part of the same unspoken rule that insists on the ’12 week wait’ before sharing news of a pregnancy, the very same that essentially devalues any losses before that point and almost expects women to keep it a secret. But for most women, the second you find out you are pregnant, your life as you knew it takes a back seat, and the stakes become higher than they ever were before.
But what about a woman who was pregnant but then lost her child? What do we call her then? It’s a question I wrestled with for months while my heart broke into pieces, when I lost our baby at nineteen weeks. I felt overwhelmed with every shade of grief you can imagine, and the one I kept circling back to was shame. Shame that I’d failed at the one job mothers are supposed to get right; to protect their child. The pain weighed so unbelievably heavy on my heart. Now, I know that feeling is so common for women who have lost a child at any stage of pregnancy. It’s not rational, and none of it is based on truth; there was absolutely nothing I did wrong or could have done. But explain those feelings of self-blame and guilt, if they are not those of a mother. I felt like these imaginary failings demoted me from ‘mother’ in an instant.
In those earlier days after the loss, I agonised over how I would answer if I was ever asked whether I had any children. Because I did, didn’t I? I carried a baby with so much hope it ripped me into pieces when that hope was gone. I delivered her into this world, held her in my arms. I named her. Sadly, many women get far less, but that doesn’t make any of them any less of a mother. We grieve over our losses as if we had known them. Because we had.
It wasn’t until the women I am so lucky to have in my life made me realise that I was a mother too that I began to understand. They told me over and over again until I finally believed it myself. Because whilst you may look and see me as childless, I have carried motherhood in my heart. Being a mother is more than child birth, and like countless women, I have created and carried the pure magic of hope and dreams of a child. It ended in grief and heartbreak in my case, but that feeling doesn’t go away.
For me, Mother’s Day will always have a huge question mark, starting with this one. The one where my first baby would have been four months old. The one I would’ve been able to hold her in my arms, breathe her in and thank the universe for putting her there. Instead, all I can do is imagine and pray that one day a Mother’s Day will come and I will get to have all of those things.
The day is complicated. I celebrate my own mother and the mother figures in my life, my sisters who have grown into the most wonderful mothers, and one of my close friends who is due to give birth to her first baby this week. But as well as the joys, I also have to allow space for my own sadness. So, whilst we celebrate the beauty of motherhood this Mother’s Day, give a thought to those for whom this day is heavy. There are those whose mothers are no longer here, and the day is full of grief. And there are also the mothers who have lost, the ones who carry the hope of a child in their chests, women who are unable to have children, and those who are waiting and trying and praying, quite often silently and alone. Today especially, reach out to them. Acknowledge that each and every one of them is a mother, just not always in the ways that are easily understood. Because, the parts that make a mother can’t always be seen. And we will be grateful that you thought of us too.