A letter to my unborn child

Dear Unborn Child,


As you travel through life people will come in and out of yours. Sometimes you will really connect with those people but most of the time you will just pass by each other, always two distinct entities stuck deep inside of protective bubbles made out of flesh, bones, insecurities, defensiveness, cultural teachings, biases, assumptions and expectations and you will barely even see one another. It’s challenging, rare and can be scary but I hope for you that you will truly connect with other humans many times throughout your life because these brief encounters are what make life worth living. 



Many of the times you do actually breach the barriers and connect with someone on a deeper level it will be very short but the memory of those times will soften your heart when the world seems cruel and they will give you encouragement and hope when you feel you aren’t worthy of the world. I hope for you that one day you will fall in love either with a romantic partner or a very best friend and then you will get longer little bits of precious, true human connection. However no other connection in your whole life will be as intimate and satisfying as what you have had with me these last nine months and will continue to have with me for the next several months of your infancy and off and on throughout our lives (unless of course you one day bear a child of your own).


After this time you and I will always be searching for a connection as deep as the one we have shared and everything else will fall short with the exception of another mother-baby bond. We may not always know that this connection is what we seek to recreate and at times we will be filled with longing, frustration and loneliness at how our other relationships feel. Even falling in love for the first time will fall short of the excitement, joy and security we have felt sharing one body. Nothing will ever quite satisfy you the way living inside your mother and in your mother’s arms did. You will never feel as safe and content and I will never again feel as powerful, important and full of love. When you are grown we will both miss the long bouts of knowing we are one and therefore one with everything else in the universe. When you are grown we will both miss experiencing the miracle of your becoming and the hope and awe that inspires.


Your birth is the first step in a necessary but nonetheless painful, slow, incremental tearing apart. You and I will be ecstatic at first and then we will cry together as I hold you to my chest knowing this is the beginning of the end of something precious. Being born always hurts a little.


When you begin to creep and crawl in a few short months
 our faces will only show pride and excitement but we will both secretly mourn as yet another step away from each other is made. Watching you grow up will be a true delight but heart breaking in many ways. When love is this big and real, change always hurts a little. 


Our bond is so important and so special that you and I will both remember every time I have fallen short. You will forgive me and I will forgive myself but it’ll always hurt a little. One day you will become a teenager and you will be overcome with an urge to push even further away. We will know it has to happen but we will both be traumatized by it. I will forgive you and you will forgive yourself but it will always hurt a little.


As adults we will share an extraordinary past of deep, real, connection and physical and spiritual interdependence. Sometimes nothing will work to console you but to have your mother. 

In the worst moments of your life you will forget you are grown and you will cry out for me. 

I wont always be there for you but I will try my best. You will forgive me and I will forgive myself but the love is so intense it will always hurt a little. No one will bring light into my life like you do and I will sometimes forget you are grown and long to hold you to my chest again but you wont always let me. I will forgive you and you will forgive yourself but it will always hurt a little. 

We will often feel like no one understands us like we do and we will long to be close again even though we will both struggle to say it and fumble when we try to make it happen. We will forgive each other but it will always hurt a little. 


When I lay dying my last thought will be of you, not myself and I will be afraid to leave you in this world alone. When you lay dying you will call out for me in a haze forgetting that I have already gone but I haven’t really...your body came from mine and we are together always.


We will not always be this close, we may fight, we may move far away from each other, we may hurt each other, you or I may not survive your birth or your childhood but the bond we forged this year will always glow brightly inside of our hearts and it will be there to rekindle whenever we need it...even death can’t keep us apart because we have broken down all the barriers and truly connected, as a mother and child, as two human beings. I know that you are not fully developed in body but you are a full person in spirit and personality; I know this because I can feel your whole self, all of your potential, all of your fire inside of me just like you can feel my humanity like no one else ever has. 


I am grateful and honored and heartbroken to have been this close to you. Thank you for choosing me, thank you for choosing to be with me in body as long as you have. I accept that we can't go on this close forever and I’m ready for the ripping apart to begin. Like you I am sad, excited, over joyed and a little scared yet I give you permission to be born and start the process. I will do my best to deliver you into the world bravely and safely and I will do my best to mother you with everything I’ve got. I’ll promise not to hold you back by keeping you a baby or a child longer than you need me to if you promise not to hold me back by taking more than you need from me. I’ll promise not to resent you as you grow apart from me if you promise not to resent me for the mistakes I will make. Let us always remember that we have seen each other fully and never lose the love that experience created. 

We have both loved this time, you will only remember it in your heart but we will both cherish the memory forever.

Let’s begin. 



-Your mother

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