Everyone I have talked to has said that there is no question that I am and always will be a mother. And in the sense that I carried my baby to term, delivered him, and cared for him for two and a half days, yes, I am a mother… but… I will never breastfeed him. I won’t get to stay up with him night after night loving him and stealing kisses while smelling his incredible scent. We will never be able to celebrate his milestones, get to know his personality, foster his gifts, or hear his voice. I will never watch him try to blow out a candle on a cake or perform in a school play. I will never be able to discipline him and help him to learn and grow through his mistakes.
Everything I envisioned, all of the incredible things I couldn’t wait to experience as a mother, are no longer possible. This wasn’t just the completely unexpected death of my son, it was also the death of me as a mother. Today, Logan would have been 9 days old. I would give anything to be exhausted beyond compare with sore nipples and nerves as raw as my nether regions as I had expected to be. Instead, my baby is gone and I am empty (both literally and figuratively, how I miss feeling him move inside me). I cannot begin to describe the depths of my devastation and pain. Each day it takes more courage to get up than I ever knew I had and every day of this waking nightmare is harder than the last.
How can I have just grown and given birth to a human being only to find that my life is altogether unrecognizable and completely the same? I am a mother without a child. I cannot go back to live life as I did before because to do so feels like an insult to my son’s memory. However, what am I to do since I don’t have the child with me who I expected to change my day to day life so much? I promised him I would make him proud, but what does that look like?
I will always be Logan’s mother. He is etched into my heart and soul and I am forever changed. But, how can I be a mom without a child? I suppose that I am going to spend the rest of my life answering that question.