When I was pregnant with my first daughter, Mathilda, a dear friend shared with me that the Honey Bee is an important symbol to hold on to in those last few months of pregnancy to remind us of the sweetness of this special time, before birth, with our babies. Of course I could have never known that my sweet Tillie would be born still at 40.5 weeks. I look back on my first pregnancy with so much emotion but one thing I am grateful for is that I was able to embrace the idea Honey Bee. Even before I knew of it, I was cherishing each moment with my baby girl rolling around inside of my growing belly.
Now, after having to tread down the path of secondary infertility, I am pregnant with our second child, thanks to the wonders of intrauterine insemination (IUI). We are having another daughter. With Mathilda we didn’t find out the sex of the baby, but this time around we are looking for anything and everything that can help us to connect and make this pregnancy feel more real. After a year of bearing the unbearable, it is hard to believe that anything good can actually happen. I am struggling to find the Honey Bee. The sweetness is tarnished with worry and dread. I have some moments of real excitement and many moments of debilitating fear. I have come to the realization that there is room for all of these emotions, but going through them all is a daily workout. As I have entered my second trimester I seem to be calming down a little, but I know that come the third trimester, based on my past experience with Stillbirth, the anxiety will start to rise again. As a bereaved mother, I know there is no “safe zone” and have come to meet so many incredible parents who have lost their beloved babies at all different stages of pregnancy and infancy. So while I have my own traumatic experience to shoulder, I also have the knowledge of so, so many others. I am trying to be patient with myself and attempt to stay in the moment, versus getting swept up in the trauma of the past or the fears of what could go wrong in the future. I guess I need to reclaim the idea of the Honey Bee as my own- as a bereaved mother. Mathilda was my blissful pregnancy- the sweetness was pure and overflowing. That is no longer an option for me after burying my first child. The weight of that experience is one I will always carry, just like I will always carry my love for Mathilda. The loss of her is like the sting of the Honey Bee, painful and leaving behind a barbed stinger. Now that I know that pain, the honey can never be as sweet, but I can still try to appreciate its beauty and wonder. Not every bee stings us and not every pregnancy ends in death and devastation. That’s what I have to try and focus on. One of my doctors recently said to me, ‘Prepare to bring home a baby this time’ and while I am trying to believe it, I can’t help but think about all the things we did instead of bringing home a baby- writing her graveside service, her obituary, making those final plans, trying to stop the milk from coming in, figuring out who this new person was staring back at me in the mirror- the heartbreaking list goes on and on. So while YES, I am 100% a mother, and a darn good one to our Tillie, there is so much I don’t know about being a mother to a living baby. Maybe that is where I will finally be able to find the sweetness of the Honey Bee. Maybe for me, this time, I will find it after I give birth, instead of before. I would happily trade 40 weeks of sweetness for a lifetime with my sweet girl. Of course, it doesn’t work this way- if it did, there wouldn’t be any such thing as a bereaved mother. I know I don’t get to choose- all I can do is try to embrace the sweet when I can and tend to the stings as they come.
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Darcie & JonathanLovebirds in Loss. Archives
April 2018
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