Is motherhood restricted to having a child?

Is motherhood restricted to having a child? 

The story of Mallika Bhatia

Spanning over New Delhi and Munich

Written by Mallika Bhatia

Back in 2012, motherhood had already changed me much before I  became a mother. I had leaking breasts, sleepless nights, contractions, labor pains, stretch marks, everything that could qualify me as a new mother but no baby to show for it. I had delivered her, of course, but instead of her 21 week old body being handed to my warm arms, she was put in an ice box and sent for biopsy.

My baby had died in my womb in the fifth month of pregnancy. The cause was never made clear. No doctor wanted to claim responsibility, no one wanted to take the onus and call out the cause. We were told in hushed voices that it could be because of an invasive test that was administered too late in my pregnancy. According to the reports of the very test that took our child from us, she was a perfectly healthy fetus, hence no cause of death could be determined except for maybe shock of the test. We could blame the machines, we could blame the people involved or ourselves but all the blame in the world could not bring back our child. She was gone; without me ever having seen her, without me ever having touched her, without me taking-in her baby smell and inspite of she growing inside of me, she was taken away. I never got to know her yet she changed me completely.

She taught me to love someone deeply without having met them. She taught me to be angry without fear. She helped me learn the importance of my relationship with my partner. Her going away made me see clearly that we, as humans always operate out of our weaknesses. A few of my so-called friends did not reach out to me because they did not know what to say. Family members and relatives did not try hard enough to support me emotionally because they believed I was strong myself. People who were supposed to console me, got awkward around me. It made me question the meaning of each and every relationship I had. My own mother was far away visiting my sister in another continent when I became a mother.

A mother!! Yes, I was still a mother even though at that point, I had never wanted a baby of my own again. It was too painful to want one. I was a mother even though I had believed that giving birth was the most physically painful experience there ever can be. Labor felt as if the devil himself was sitting at the center of my being and pushing aside each of my parts, shoving every bone and trying his best to tear up the lower part of my body. The lack of a child had not taken motherhood away, in fact it gave me a painful version of the experience. I was still a mother, though an unfulfilled one.

I still sang to my child in heaven and I wrote for her and thought of her all the time. Not crying at the brink of a hat was not an option that existed. Our missed abortion, which is what the doctors call it, made me miss a huge part of my life. Even though I am a psychotherapist, it was my husband who was acting like one for me.  He had lost a child too but he focussed on the sobbing, howling creature in front of him that needed love instead of tending to his wounds.

My physical recovery was much faster than the mental one. I was discharged from the hospital the same day that I had delivered my baby girl. My gynecologist had very conveniently forgotten to mention that I was going to start lactating soon, just like she forgot to shift me to the labor room and I had delivered right on the bed that I had in my room. She had forgotten that I was supposed to deliver in her presence and not when she was busy in the O.P.D. and still be charged a hefty amount for her assistance in my delivery. I had never experienced so much pain in my breasts like I did the next day when I woke up. They had never felt like rocks in the past. The doctor simply said, oh I must have forgotten to prescribe the medicine against it. My body was reacting to the delivery and producing milk for the baby who could never drink it. My breasts were full, heavy and hard.

Emotionally I felt lost, purposeless, unsupported. I could not trust anyone around me, neither could I go back to work. My profession involves helping others cope with their issues. How was I supposed to help someone else cope when I was going through so much myself? I needed something to push me, something to motivate me, something to make me feel otherwise. I needed a change of scene and I needed to be far away from where I was, literally.

Strange that I say that because both me and my husband were against moving out of our country. We were happy with our lives before this incident. We had our work, our friends, our family and our social support in India. India was the only life we had known and the only life we had loved until then.

We moved to Germany within five months of losing our baby. It was a difficult decision to make, a very difficult one! We were moving out of our comfort zones to a country where no one spoke the language we understood. In Munich, which is where we live, people either spoke German or Bavarian, there was no third language back then. We literally did not know anyone here. We did not know how this country worked and there was no way to find it out unless we learnt the local language.

In the hind side, the newness and challenges were the best things that happened to us. It meant a fresh new start, it meant no baggages, it meant new challenges and new learning every single day. Even though I had been with my husband for many years, now was the time where we had many of our adventurous firsts and hopeful seconds. We went to our first Oktoberfest together; got drunk, acted crazy, played pranks and loved each other a little more. We learnt our first foreign language together, we visited many countries for the first time and after a year and half of healing ourselves, we decided to have our second child together.

Even though the decision was full of hope and trust, I dealt with anxiety every single day. I cried very often and prayed very hard. The conversations that I had with my husband were my comfort; he would say, "no matter what happens, we are together and healthy and that is what matters. At other times he would tell me to trust. Trust in the universe, trust in our luck, trust in our destiny, trust that we learnt our lessons the first time, trust that things can't go wrong twice. I also had two friends who were my constant support. I would talk to them very often, share my fears and truly gain strength from them. These three people saw me through my anxiety in an otherwise healthy and perfect pregnancy.

I was glowing and growing. Me and my husband travelled and explored more places before our second child finally arrived. We bought little things for her together and prepared for our lives to be changed forever. When she was finally born, she had ten perfectly manicured fingers, ten little toes, the chubbiest cheeks we had ever seen and that divine baby smell that drove us crazy with love. She was perfect then and now at four years of age, she just keeps getting better. We are growing together as a family. She teaches us much more than we teach her. She gives us much more than we ever can. She speaks three languages fluently, four if you consider her language of love. She is a wise little nut who knows exactly which buttons to press in order to get what she wants. We are raising her not as an inferior for being a child, nor as a superior for being our rainbow baby but exactly as an equal. We let her make mistakes, we let her fall, we let her experience pain because we know it is through the pain that we grew into who we are today. We let her believe in magic and let her hope that unicorns become real creatures, because it is hope that always sees us though.

* If you found this story inspiring then don't forget to share, comment, like and subscribe to The Hope Tribe.You can be the instrument of Hope for someone by spreading these inspirational tales. Thanks for reading, Mallika Bhatia, Founder- The Hope Tribe