At a friend’s house last week I ran into a mama from my pregnancy support circle. Our due dates had been days apart. We recognized each other, but it took some time for us to remember where we had met. With her baby girl in her lap, she asked about Ben. She asked how I was. I could tell she wanted to know and wasn’t simply asking to be polite. I could feel the relief of the conversation in my body and realized how often people turn away or change the subject. They don’t know what to say or do, and I am left to stand alone with my dead baby cooties. I play that game well but it sends an ache deep into the marrow of my bones. I can be interested in your baby, but it’s hard for you to be interested in mine. You don’t want to know what it felt like to hold him, to trace the lines of his tiny body and touch the papery softness of his purple skin. You can’t see that his nose was perfect but his eyelashes weren’t yet there. He is not here for me to bounce in my lap, put to my breast, trade sleep and poop and teething stories about. He is not here for you, but he is for me.

Last night, I sat at the dinner table with my sister-in-law and her friend, both with their second babies on their laps. I could have joined the conversation but it was clear that I was not part of the new baby club. It’s a bummer to hear from the woman whose child died when you’re in the throes of pregnancy or life with a newborn. I feel that in my core and it’s often a difficult decision whether to speak up or hold my tongue. I’ve quieted the room enough times to know that sometimes, it’s easier to walk away. I did deliver my new quick answer when someone at the park asked if Ada was my only child. She is my only living child, yes. It still ended the conversation.

Today I spoke of Ben with my brother’s friend as we drove to pick up lunch. We met last year at the graduation picnic, the weekend I went to the Berkeley ER with a sudden, violent bleed. I talked, as I do, about how hard it has been and how grateful I am that my life has changed because of it. He understood. As a teenager an accident almost killed him and the trajectory of his life was altered. The energy of feeling understood and not pitied stayed with me for hours.

Life is changing at a rapid pace right now. I am excited and exhausted. I am pushing myself to new thresholds, knowing that I will come out the other side transformed. But no matter who I am, or what I do, for the rest of my life, Benjamin will be a part of me. The ache of losing him comes and goes, the intensity of grief varies. I hope that wherever I am in my life, I am able to be the one who hears without pitying, who asks without cringing, for many others, whatever their stories.

Courage is a Love Affair with the Unknown. – Osho

The fact that Mother’s Day is coming hadn’t yet crossed my mind. I was three months pregnant last year in the middle of May, fresh from a trip to the Emergency Room in Berkeley, reassured at least somewhat that my baby and I were both fine. This year I will be blessed to celebrate both as a daughter and a mother. No one will question this because I have a living child.

But I remember well the ache of Mother’s Day 2006 after my first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. I remember the feeling of not being official the following year, despite my swollen belly, because I hadn’t yet held my child. From this vantage point, I know with my entire being that a woman does not have to see her baby with her eyes, or hold him in her arms to be a mother. My heart hurts for all of the baby lost mamas who have yet to be recognized by society because we cannot see their child.

I got an email today from the woman who organized a Holiday Ornament Swap to remember our dead children. While it brought up all my insecurities around being crafty, sending my little bit of homemade love to another grieving family was important in my healing process, and receiving one with Ben’s name on it meant so much. Another one is being organized for Mother’s Day, so that all mothers who have lost a child during pregnancy or shortly after can be recognized. If you are a baby lost mama and would like more information and/or would love to participate, click here for details. I’ll be trying out my new needle felting skills for this one.

“So when the great word ‘Mother!’ rang once more,
I saw at last its meaning and its place;
Not the blind passion of the brooding past,
But Mother — the World’s Mother — come at last,
To love as she had never loved before —
To feed and guard and teach the human race.”

— Charlotte Perkins Gilman