In a Mother's Heart...

Today, I was looking around the net for inspiring blog posts to read, something I like doing once-in-a-while before I sit down to write. Just this morning, I had been listening to an interesting podcast featuring a blogger named Arianne Segerman and she’d talked about some great stuff about mama fashion, an arena that I’m beginning to explore and get comfortable with.

So, today, when I stepped into the web world, I went straight to her blog. As I hopscotched my way across her lovely online space, moving from one post to another,  all of a sudden I landed on a page, on a story, on a bouquet of moments that were poignant and beautiful. This was the birth story of Mabel, the writer’s baby daughter who was born asleep.

Like a bolt of lightening, like the silken cover of fog on a mountain, this post made me stop in my tracks and pray for a little girl, for a tiny baby, who lives on in her mother’s heart, her brothers’ smiles and her father’s eyes. It took me back to that moment when I asked in a voice too loud in a room that had gone silent all of a sudden “Is my baby dying?” and prayed silently at the same time “Please God, don’t let my baby die”.

As I read and absorbed every word and every emotion, I remembered the tiny baby girl who breathed her last breaths in the NICU as I breastfed my son for the first time, in a chair just a few footsteps away from her tray.


I remember the frantic beeping of the machines to which her tiny body was hooked onto; the look on the faces of her family members, as they trooped in one by one to say goodbye to her; the wails of her mother and the tear in her heart. I remember the lump in my throat and the heaviness in my steps, as I went in to feed my son a couple of hours later again and passed the little girl’s tray – now empty and bereft.

I stayed on Arianne’s blog page, my thoughts far away. I thought of another mother, who’d shared a similar story with me. A birth story that will be forever etched on my heart. A story that reminds me every single day of the contradictory nature of birth. Of how birth and babies are all about fragility and strength. Of how sometimes, nurturing and birthing a life can be a stretch of time filled with heaviness and sorrow, love and heartbreak. Of how creating a baby within your womb is about taking a chance, of surrendering. Of how, a mother has to be prepared for anything.

Today, as I write, I pray for every little baby, who has crossed over to the world of rainbows. I pray for every mother, who had to let go of her tiny baby’s physical form. I pray that they meet through dreams and prayers. I pray for peace, for salve for the mother's heart.