The Unspoken Grief of Motherhood

As I sit here in the living room of my parent’s home, I hear the rocking of my newborn’s bassinet next to me and I am satisfied that he is sleeping well. Most days, he sleeps best when cuddle up in my arms. Indicative of the season, he is in my arms frequently throughout the day, as he should be. But his older brother Obed asks for me to “hold you” often and I have to widen my arms to hold them both.

Slowly encroached by my pregnant belly, my lap had been growing smaller and smaller over the course of nine months. Obed in tandem, grew bigger and bigger and naturally, he didn’t fit as easily into my lap as before. My discomfort made me eager to put him in his bed in the evenings so I’d no longer be elbowed and kicked (unintentionally, of course).

But it seems over the two weeks we were in the hospital and NICU, Obed seemed to have grown and fleshed out an illegal amount. I knew he’d no longer feel like a baby as he did before, in comparison to his newborn brother, but I was not prepared for how long he suddenly felt. I have heard other mothers express this sentiment when their own subsequent children were born.

For all the joy babies and littles bring, I find my heart grieves each stage as a new one approaches. It seems that death of a physical body is not the only form of grief in our mortal experience in our lives. While grief is ultimately a fleshly longing for what’s been lost or removed from our realm of reality, it is also a poignant reminder of the promise of eternal life with our Savior. It is a bittersweet reminder of the immanent condition of our heavenly bodies. We will never age or decay in the presence of our Jesus in Heaven.