Sitting quietly in my room, the kids are all tucked in bed — or so I thought. I hear a small knock at the door and enters my 4-year old daughter. She often pops into our bed to cuddle at night so I thought it was just going to be the same — a quick cuddle and she’s fall right to sleep.
But, she had other things on her mind this night. Worries.
She turned to me and whispered:
“Is the baby in your belly going to die?”
— as she put her hand on my growing belly, hoping to feel him move.
The question took me a little by surprise — it wasn’t what I was expecting at that moment. However, this is not the first time she’d asked about the baby, wondering if he would be okay.
Loss changes everyone in the family — even when family members join the family after. My youngest child, the one asking the questions, was born after Triton, my son who I lost in early second trimester. She knows of him because, although he’s no longer here with us, he will forever be a part of our family.
As I navigate this pregnancy with the glasses of grief, my own worries and whispers of “what if” play in my mind often. It’s never far from my mind, no matter how positive I try to be — it’s always there. Parenting through grief is not something I anticipated ever doing and I never knew how hard it would really be.
“No, baby is okay. Here, feel him move?”
— I try to reassure her, knowing how quickly things can change, but answering for the now.
Answering for my heart and hers because everything has to be.
Photo credit: adapted from robinrkc | Flickr
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