Still A Mommy

Being a mommy is something I have always dreamt of.

I’ve always been that motherly type of person who everyone calls mom. I’ve always been so loving, caring, and affectionate toward others and I’ve always dreamt of that one day that I would be able to show that love to my own child.

But I never imagined my journey through motherhood to look this way.

At 33 weeks gestation, on February 9, 2020 I became a mother to a beautiful baby boy. This is the day I always dreamt of…

However, this day looked a lot different than I could have ever imagined.

My son was stillborn (Stillborn: A baby born dead after 20 weeks of pregnancy). The child that I imagined loving for the rest of my life, was no longer here on earth.

I left the hospital empty handed. Without my child.

As a mother to an angel, motherhood looks a little different for me. When people look at my little family of three, they only see 2 people.

People who don’t know what happened, ask us how our pregnancy is going. People who don’t know us at all, ask us if we plan to have any children. We get asked if we currently have any children. The internal tug of war that we face is on whether to say, “yes” and have to explain our situation next, yet know that they will feel bad for asking. Or, on the other hand, if we say “no” and feel guilty that we didn’t tell them about our sweet boy.

I spend a lot of time hurting from the loss of my son and I spend a lot of time thanking God that I will one day get to be with him again. I spend a lot of time crying from the pain. But at the same token, I spend a lot of time smiling from the comfort of knowing that he is always with me.

I talk to my son often, but not in a way that I could have ever imagined.

As a mother, I want to talk about my son just as much as other mothers like to talk about their newborn babies. However, people don’t bring him up often because they feel that it will hurt my feelings or make me sad.

It actually hurts me more when people act as if he never existed.

As a mother who experienced loss at such a late in pregnancy, I felt everything my son did. If I knew about anything more than myself, I knew my son.

I knew what foods he liked, I knew where his body parts were, I knew his favorite side of my tummy, I knew him. All I ever want is to talk about him so that other people can know him as well.

Motherhood for me is not breastfeeding, changing diapers, and hearing my baby say mama for the first time; but it is wondering what all that would have felt like if my baby were here with me.

Every Sunday, I count, and celebrate each week, in which my baby would have been here. Each month, I celebrate how many months he would have been. Yet, sad to say, I don’t get to post those pictures and save those memories in a photo album because my baby is not here.

I watch other women post their happy and healthy children and often wonder why I couldn’t experience that with my sweet son.

Kaius James.

Although my grieving may sound sad, I'm okay.

I will say it again.

I'm okay.

And the reason why I am okay is because we have God on our side. We have our baby angel on our side. And most of all, my husband and I have each other. We have faith that we will have a little rainbow baby picked out, especially by his/her angel brother in heaven, that we will one day love as we imagined we would with our little boy.

This experience has made me a stronger woman. I can and have handled one of life’s worst pains. The pain of losing a child. I never would have thought this was anything I could ever survive or live with, but I am living.

I live for my son.

I live to make him proud that I am his mommy.

I live for my husband.

I live for our future children.

I am a strong woman.

I am a strong mommy.

How will my first Mother’s Day look? My husband and I will be spending time at my son’s gravesite. Not at all how I thought Mother’s Day would be, but there is no other place I’d rather be.

So, as I said before, my journey through motherhood looks a little different. But I am a mother to a beautiful baby boy named Kaius James Woodard. And even though others may not see him, he is always here with us.

#MayForMothers

**If you would like to read more about Emily's journey as a mother, please click the link below to her blog.**

Website: Still A Mommy