by Sarah Israelsen When I became a mom I knew how to take care of a human. I knew how to change diapers, feed a baby, hold him, comfort him, and put him to sleep. I knew how to smile, coo, give attention, stimulate, and love a child. And I thought I could be what […]
Liz has known since she was a child that she would be a mother. It was the fact she based many of her life decisions around and the thing that made her “a crazy person.”
by Bonnie Overly I’ve had a brand new pair of pink baby shoes sitting on my bathroom counter for a week now. I had decided it was time to go through my girl baby clothes and separate items for saving, donating, or passing on to friends when I came across these shoes. My daughter never […]
Nicole had a severe case of pregnancy sickness called hyperemesis gravidarum—which is definitely NOT morning sickness—that left her feeling like a shell of a person for virtually her entire pregnancy.
It was early November, I think. Starting to get chilly and gray. I was tired. It was mid-morning, and I was lying on the couch. I lay there, half asleep, half aware of my daughter playing with her stuffed animals a few feet away. She beckoned me to get up. I moaned something about being […]
Today’s episode is an essay written and read by Lizzie Heiselt. It takes on the “all that matters is that you have a healthy baby” idea. For anyone who’s been told this, you know there’s not really a response to that. On some level, it’s true. Having a baby—let alone a healthy one—is something to […]
In the days after Gina gave birth to her stillborn son, James, she wrote a record of the event on her blog. It was a beginning of her mourning and rebuilding process and captures both the grief she was feeling at the time and the hope that she had that her life would be made […]
The full human experience includes this: pregnancy, birth, life, death. And if all goes well and normally, the pregnancy is 9 months, the birth takes a day or so, the life is decades long, and the death neither sneaks up nor hovers for too long. But the normal order is sometimes confused. The pregnancy is too short. […]
There is an expectation with pregnancy that growing a life leads to glowing. The question, “How are you feeling?” is supposed to elicit maybe some talk about morning sickness, followed quickly by, “But we’re so excited.” The words “prenatal depression” are rarely heard even in the rare case they are acknowledged by the expectant mom.
We talked to some soon-to-be-moms about this, their first pregnancy, to find out how they are feeling, what they are thinking, and what their story is as they are on the brink of becoming someone new. Someone’s mom.
