Written September 2024
The ache in my chest is unbearable. It demands that my baby be held there.
My body screams and thrashes for her.
My chest calls to me “Rest her head here.”
I answer in sobs “I wish I could”
My breasts explode “Bring her to me!”
“She’s gone!” I yell back.
My arms demand, “Let us carry her!”
Again I weep “I wanted to keep her too.”
Visceral pleas bring me to my knees and then leave me in the fetal position on the floor.
I would if I could.
But I can’t.
Why can’t I have my daughter?
My body is confused why I would withhold the one thing that can make it feel better. I held her there as soon as I could after birth, as soon as we broke her out of the NICU, on the couch meeting her sisters, in her carrier getting ready in the bathroom, in my bed snuggling as the sun came up, on the ER bed when she stopped eating and finally after they cut the cords and I had sang to her as the last amount of life left her. I held her there. It’s where she belongs.
About this visceral ache, her daddy said it best “Her body was supposed to help yours heal, and your body was supposed to help her grow.”
The answer to this pain now is buried underground.
How can it be, Lord, that I will never hold my baby again?
A Mother's Lament 
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