I’m Your Mama

January 29, 2024

What the heck is a “mother”, anyway?

I’ve spent years curating the perfect combination of traits for myself as a mother. 

Being a parent has always been a very important responsibility to me. Learning in my childhood that parenting looks different and feels different across families, I began taking mental notes. I paid close attention to the parents that felt like warm blankets and to the parents that felt like a constant skinned knee. By the time I was in my teens, I thought that I had a good sense of parenting strategies that were successful and those that were not. 

If only that were the truth.

Into my college years, my understanding of who I was shifted from an aspiring big city art school grad to an aspiring early childhood educator. Not only did this change my view of myself, but it launched a new series of observations and knowledge seeking about what practices support an optimal childhood experience. I felt thrilled about the research backed practices that support parents in supporting their children. Now, of course, I was learning this all from a teaching perspective, but I couldn’t help but internalize the information and categorize it in the “Save for Parenthood” file. 

While I gained more knowledge, I again, had so much more to learn. 

By the time that I graduated college and started my career in education, I had plenty of friends raising toddlers and babies themselves. At that point, my priorities were still very joy and passion based as I had yet to become pregnant, let alone find someone I wanted to be on a parenting journey with. And so, I spent a lot of time with friends and their children over the course of the last (almost) decade and I embodied the persona of “the lady that people trust with their kids.” 

Honestly, it’s been an honor. I’ve loved every minute of it. 

Moving further along, I am given the gift of becoming an aunt, thanks to my sister, Haley. Not only was I given the opportunity of attending her birth, but over the 7 years of my neice’s life (now 2.5 of our nephew’s) I’ve been able to be so present with their childhood. Equally as important, I've been able to witness my sister’s journey as a parent. She, along with my friends with kids, showed me that parenting is an opportunity to break cycles, heal, and become a better version of yourself. 

What a wild ride. 

Then comes the time of life where Fitz and I decide that we want to have our own babies. We decide to get married first (because his Catholic guilt* would have never left him) and we were both under the very mistaken impression that I would just become pregnant instantly. All the teenage warnings of unplanned pregnancies kept our practices very safe, until we were ready. But then we learned that there were so many more factors at play. 

What an annoying realization. 

All this time (less than a year) of waiting to become pregnant and only 3 months of that year actively pursuing pregnancy, I was diving deeper into the world of pregnancy and parenthood. Equipping myself with as much information as I could to become the best parent I could be emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. Combining new information from doula training with my early childhood education, and my life experiences, I was curating the perfect formula for motherhood. 

Or so I thought. 

Never once, had I prepared myself for what kind of impact child loss has on a person and their parenting. Never once, had I considered what it would be like to learn to be a parent to a child who wasn’t earthside. Never once had I let my mind imagine the world of being a parent who dares to get pregnant again, give birth, and raise a baby after your first one is born still. 

What a reality check. 

While my life experience, education, and focused studies of raising young children were still relevant, I was in no way prepared to live with the newfound fears of what could happen to our child that did make it earthside. I could not have imagined that laying our newborn baby down would be highly triggering for both myself and Fitz, as our most recent newborn experience was that with our baby who was born sleeping. Our memories of him laying in a chilled bassinet, appearing to be sleeping just as any other newborn. It was in those moments that I would go to lay our sweet second babe down, that it would hit me that my brain was convinced that he would die if I couldn’t validate his breathing every second of the day with direct contact.

I could have never expected the longer list of fears.

While laying him down (in the safest way possible) seemed highly dangerous in my mind, I was also terrified of any random thing that could potentially occur for months on end. We felt that the odds were not in our favor after the loss of Malcolm. How could parenting feel even relatively normal for us when we existed in a reality where we were constantly reviewing health statistics for every infant age range and milestone?

This is a very different parenthood than we might have imagined. 

We are now on the cusp of the 2nd anniversary of meeting our baby, Malcolm. Our second child, Leo, is about 8.5 months old. We still don’t know a life where we don’t check on our sleeping baby every few minutes. We recently joked about the luxury that many parents have that they can trust that their sleeping baby is just fine as they get work done, enjoy a dinner, or read a book. And yet, while we envy that, we also find the truest version of ourselves on this journey of parenthood to a child who has died and a child who lives. We hold the experience of our trauma, the deepest love in our hearts, and the motivation to make our parenthood meaningful for ourselves and our children. 

We feel more grateful than we may have been otherwise. 

Being a mother to Malcolm and Leo leaves me with a new lens of parenthood. It focuses my attention more on the balance of parenthood than on rules I may need to follow. This journey of loss and parenthood allows me to be a transparent partner with Fitz as we communicate frequently about what is challenging for us and what joy this journey brings. We aim to learn how to let go of the confines of what we thought “perfect parenting” was or is, and we allow ourselves to be present, authentic, and reflective as we move forward. 

So as we take time to remember our sweet boy, we also take time to remember ourselves. We honor the parents we thought we were, the parents we became, and the parents we will become. We take time to ponder the moments that fill us with laughter alongside the ones of heartbreak. We choose to be accountable for, and learn from, our mistakes. 

All the while, always knowing that we have so much yet to learn. 

To savor the sweetness that is being a mama to my babies, here is a recent favorite to sing to Leo during our day. I’m Your Mama by Dawn Landes.