Finding Hope in Mothering Babies We Don't Keep

Zipporah Cannizzaro

“There are brighter days ahead.”

I will never forget those words, spoken from the labor and delivery nurse whose name I admittedly never will remember. She whispered them into my ear as she gripped my trembling hands; hands that had just laid my only child, my sweet baby boy, in a cot in the back of the mortuary vehicle. With tears smeared across my face, I nodded to her, then watched as my Leo Elijah was driven away. The next time I saw him, he was in a three-inch-tall wooden urn in my car cup holder.

Brighter days ahead.

As someone who navigated a life-limiting diagnosis of anencephaly, I spent months anticipating that moment, the moment I would say goodbye to the child my body nurtured, cared for, and sustained. The constant, nagging thought that my son was going to die consumed me. As the date for my induction neared, I actively tried to complete little adventures for Leo to experience. We beat the high score at the arcade. We ate every type of sandwich imaginable. We went fishing, swimming, and hiking. We did so many things together. And it provided me with an impossible peace. My son lived an incredible, albeit short, life. And I was and am so blessed to have had those experiences with him.

And then, one day, they were finished. And he was gone.

Brighter days ahead. Yes, but not how I expected. That peace that carried me through the most physically and emotionally painful moments of my life transformed into something I could never have experienced otherwise: Joy.

Yes, joy. Joy even after, merely two months ago, kissing the face of my child for the last time on this side of eternity.

Joy, because I am Leo’s mommy.

In my exploration of motherhood in the postpartum phase that followed my loss, I came to the realization that of all the women in the universe from the beginning until the end of time, the Creator asked me, out of all of them, to be Leo’s mother. Me, a woman who had been told only a few years before I’d probably never get pregnant. Me, a woman who struggled to be vulnerable, to sacrifice, to love. I was the one that the Creator looked upon and whispered, “Will you carry a life you cannot keep? Will you be the mother of a baby who will die in your arms?” Not because I was strong, but because I was weak.

And in the same way, the Creator asks you, too, to love and care for a life that had to be returned. It was not our choice how long our babies lived, but that of the Divine. Our only choice was (and is) whether we will accept this calling, so that we might experience love in a way few people ever will.

In her book Rewilding Motherhood, Shannon K. Evans beautifully notes, “How hard it can sometimes be to welcome a child…How much harder for those among us who have been asked to a welcome a child for too short a time: those who have bled when they shouldn’t, those who labored but whose arms remained empty, those who have seen tubes attached to their children in hospital beds, those women among us who couldn’t keep the one thing in the world they would have given everything for. How hard it would be to welcome a child for a moment when what you wanted was to hold them for eternity. Making peace with our fertility means accepting the fear and pain of what it is to be human…of what it is to love” (p. 106).

And while we would never choose this experience of love on our own, we say yes to the call to be mothers of babies we no longer get to hold.

And once we say yes, we open our hearts to unexplainable joy.

There are brighter days ahead.

Not easy. Not less painful. But brighter. Brighter because I have come to the realization that all of us who have experienced pregnancy or infant loss are set apart. Given a chance to understand an impossible kind of love and given the opportunity to connect with the Creator more intimately when we say yes to Him. And it becomes brighter because the story isn’t over. The One who holds our babies sees us, surrounds us, and reveals to us our deepest capacity to love and release.

Just as Mary was chosen to birth a Divine child, so also we have been called to nurture our babies while they were with us, and to carry their stories forever in the scars that mark our bodies.

Will you say yes to this call? Will you say yes and open the door of your heart to unimaginable love, hope, and joy?

Today is a little brighter. Today I have joy. Joy, because I choose to be Leo Elijah’s mommy! And I am the only woman in the entire universe with that claim. We are all unique mothers. How sacred it is to be bearers of lives that were never dampened by the cruelty of the world. It is not a curse, but a gift. A gift to love and mother angels. A gift to be chosen to carry pure lives. A gift that brings me hope and fills me with joy. The gift of saying, “yes” to the greatest challenge ever to be faced.

October 26, 2022:
My little lion, my brave Leo,
I want you to know that even though your life will be cut short and you will return to the Creator from where you came; even though I’ll only have a mist of a moment of a shared life with you; Even though I’ll never be able to watch you grow into a man…I want you to know, my love, that I would still say yes to you. Everyday I say yes to you. For you, my brave lion, have taught me more about myself in ways another baby could not. It is so hard. It breaks me so much, but I would not change you. I cannot change you. No. For you are changing me.
Today and forever,
your mommy

Meet the Author:
Zipporah Cannizzaro

Zipporah is an anthropologist, the wife of an immigrant, and a mother to a baby being held by the Creator. She loves exploring womanhood and creation, and reconnecting to the internal and external rhythms around her. She currently lives in Southern Utah where she spends her days celebrating life, motherhood, and exploring the beauty all around her.

Connect with Author on Instagram: @lostintheliminal