My oldest daughter had her first baby a few months ago. He is so precious and looks very much like his mama. Being with the two of them brought back memories of when his mama was a newborn. She is the second of my four children, but my first kept baby. The pregnancy I didn’t have to hide, the baby I didn’t have to lie about. I had her after I was married, and as far as most family and friends knew, she was our first baby.

I have a crystal-clear memory of preparing to bring her home on the day we were discharged from the hospital. I had gently laid her on the starched white sheets of my hospital bed. I tenderly maneuvered her tiny arms and legs into the white and green Peter Rabbit sleeper she would wear home. As I did this, I thought to myself, ‘this baby I get to take home with me’.

Once home, I sat in the rocker in my living room with her cradled tightly in my arms. I held her for hours, starring at her sweet little sleeping face. I couldn’t bring myself to put her down. I couldn’t be separated from her. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, thoughts came into my mind of her older brother. He was five years and five days older than her. I began to wonder what he was doing right then. I wondered what he would think of his baby sister. I imagined he would have begged to hold her. I’m sure he would have become fiercely protective of her. I also tried to imagine what he might look like. I had not seen him since he was three days old when I abandoned him in the hospital, to be taken home with strangers.

I had a handful of pictures of him up to the age of three months. They had come to me through the social worker. I hadn’t looked at those pictures in several years. I couldn’t bear to. Seeing his precious face, a face that resembled my own as a baby, caused too much heartache.  I couldn’t look at the pictures without tears steaming down my face. My body would shake with sobs as waves of grief and gut-wrenching regret washed over me. I feared I might drown in my own tears. The loss and grief and regret and confusion would give way to anger, so I’d dig my nails into my forearms until I bled. I also grabbed fistfuls of my own hair and pulled to feel the pain in my scalp. The physical manifestation of my pain felt just and satisfying and deserved. I was dying in anguish without my baby. I didn’t know it would be this way. 

In one of the photographs I received of my baby boy, he is in a stroller. I can see part of a sidewalk, and a little bit of lawn and some shrubs in what I assumed was his new home. I remember thinking that if I could just memorize these parts of the photograph and drive around the Greater Toronto Area, where I thought his adoptive family lived, I could find this place in the photo and get my baby back. 

Then the absurdity and impossibility of this thought would bring me back to reality with a soul-crushing thud. What was I thinking? I would never be able to find that place from the small patch of grass and shrubs in the photo, let alone in the most populous metropolitan area in Canada. 

So I tucked the handful of photos into an envelope and placed them in a drawer and resolved to never look at them again. That day I buried the photos, and my grief along with them. For the most part it stayed there. Until the day I brought my daughter home. 

I was curious to see if my babies resembled each other. I retrieved that envelope and looked at the photos of my sweet baby boy. My heart broke in a million pieces all over again, not just for my own loss, but for the loss my children would experience by not growing up together. 

When my son sent me the newborn picture of his baby boy I cried. I expected that would happen if his baby looked like him. And he did. I was prepared for the emotions that would no doubt be triggered. I had already agreed to let myself feel the emotions and embrace them fully, as I grieved the loss of my baby boy once again.

What I didn’t expect were the emotions that were triggered when my daughter had her firstborn. As I watched her deal with the surge of hormones and exhaustion that come with giving birth, my heart went out to her. I felt overwhelmed with empathy and longed to be with her, to do whatever I could to help her through this postpartum period. A silent grief was triggered for my younger self who endured an excruciating postpartum alone. Broken in despair. Without baby. Unseen. Physically and emotionally isolated. A younger self who had no one in her corner. No one who seemed to care.

As I watched my daughter it broke my heart that my mother didn’t see me and come to my rescue. Though I don’t think she knew how.

I never got to be a mom to my firstborn. I never got to openly grieve losing him. I now realize how deeply I had been hurt by not being seen, and how deep I had buried that hurt. I’ve learned the hard way that untreated wounds create painful triggers.