Initiated As Mother (I AM)

Copyright 2009 © by Eileen Tapper

Through the research on miscarriage that is beginning to emerge, a story is being

told. As with any story it needs to be written so that the reader can experience the

places the story takes you. Just as readers enjoy different themes, stories, in any

particular area of interest, are characterized by the writers who compose them.

Some stories are sad, some are happy, some have a villain or turn out

unexpected, others have a hero who saves the day. This story is different, for it is

the collective voice of many women coming together so that when they speak,

what they say is so unique that the writer, herself, must experience the journey

with them. I found this story in research where words are collected from

interviews, then analyzed, categorized, and from this, a story takes shape, giving

us insight into the experience of miscarriage. As with all stories there is a

beginning and this story begins in September of 2005.

     Excitement had mounted as she waited the three minutes to read her home


pregnancy test that she already knew, was positive. Her first baby was a life-long

dream come true. All her life she wanted nothing more than to be a mother. As

she imagined a new life growing within, she animated with a light that all the world

could see, giving her the feeling that she was a beautiful goddess who had just

created something special. What power, what mind-blowing reality to realize

yourself where creation occurs, on a universal level where all life begins.

     For the past few months, she had been experiencing the highest mountain, the

greatest joy, the epiphany of being a woman. Nothing else could compare to the

realization of making a baby. Dreams of her baby's future danced through her

head with the ease of finally being released from the collective thoughts of what

she imagined married life would be. This was what marriage was for. Family

pictures of parks, walking hand in hand, picnics on the hill, laughter, all filled her

days, painting a portrait of a happy family life on their country farm. She knew it

also had to be a son, for her husband wanted a son to work side by side with,

riding the tractor, milking the cows, giving birth to a forth generation dairy farmer

who would inherit the role. When the doctor confirmed her pregnancy with her

first ultrasound, her awareness of this tiny life inside her took on another

dimension.

     As the baby grew within, her body began to change. She experienced growing

breasts, nausea, hunger like she could not eat enough, and most of all, she

began to feel this tiny life needing her, depending on her, and loving her. She

searched the web, read books, and asked her friends questions in a desperate

passion to know more about all that she was feeling. She voiced the names that

she had long ago decided on and mixed and mingled them with the names of

relatives, his side and hers, to make her baby real. Together they picked out baby

clothes, made decisions, planned the future, and through these months, she

began to form an image of who this little person growing inside her, was.

     She felt connected, as if the baby was an extension of her, a new appendage

growing in a place that without, had always felt empty and hollow, as if waiting for

something her intuition always knew would come. She realized that a mother's

bond to her baby was intimate, private, and somehow, she was unable to share

these deeper feelings with her husband. She placed a word on the feelings that

matched the experience and called it love, knowing nothing else could be so

strong, create such passion, or make her feel so powerful. She felt this baby give

her an infinite connection that was somehow, limitless, gaining insight about

herself, as she tried to discover who this little person would become.

     This baby was pieces of her, pieces of him, growing inside, a third person in the

web of love that she was beginning to weave into a relationship that she had no

need to express. This love was at it's peak and the bond of unity that had come,

unawares, brought a realization that she stood in the place where God lived, on

sacred ground, she herself a partaker with the Creator of life. Only she and her

baby understood this mystery, this secret. Only she and her baby had this

knowledge, this special relationship that filled her soul. Her cup was full and her

heart, overflowing. Nothing could ever take these feelings away, or so she

thought.

     In the height of her highest high, on a cold winter morning, she awoke with vivid

recall of a dream she had been dreaming. She felt numb, afraid to move, terrified

to replay the thoughts back through her head. She carefully went about her

morning chores and just when she thought the mood of her nightmare had

dispersed, her water broke. Her husband took her to the Emergency Room of the

local hospital and her fears where confirmed. She was loosing her baby. She was

told she was having a miscarriage and given instructions on what to expect.

Close to twelve hours later, she delivered her baby, holding him inside herself until

the last flutter of life had passed. As the lifeless body lay upon her belly, in a

frantic effort to place meaning on what had taken place, she scrambling through

the baby book of names and announced, “Reuben, his name is Reuben, which

means, 'Behold, a son.”

Shock is the word that best describes this first reaction to a somewhat

unexpected outcome. It begins when the woman first realizes something is

happening that disrupts her ideal end result. As the woman in our story can testify,

it started when she first awoke with the dream that she would later realize, with

chilling detail, had played out exactly. Just as the woman who is tuned into herself

knows she is pregnant, intuition is her voice, her knowing. Depending on how

strong her intuition is, the woman will find herself in a space of awareness that

she can not explain. Shock acts like a protective barrier, shielding her from

outside influences as she looks around at this new dimension of 'seeing' the

world. She knows she has been here before. She also knows she can not share

what she is experiencing.

Pathology is a medical term that means something is wrong. The woman's fears

are justified in a world where such a word, exists. What this story reveals is that

the woman experiences a relationship unlike any other, a connection to

something, beyond. This relationship is hard for her to talk about or share. This

relationship is hard to put into words. How do you describe a relationship that

over eons of time, has always been a secret? How do you come back from the

experience of partaking in this relationship when the yearning to have it back is all

you can think about? Is this pathology or is this only natural.

Attachment theory is an attempt to describe this relationship between a mother

and her child but attachment theory falls short because words limit our

understanding. The relationship is transpersonal, meaning beyond a personal

level, spiritual in nature, and yet, even transpersonal does not exactly describe it.

Near-Death experience studies explain it more accurately. The woman is drawn

into a realm where birth and death, collide. In this space, time does not exist. In

this place, only energy is felt and this energy is what life is made of. The

phenomenon of this experience is beginning to take shape, broadening our

understanding, collectively being spoken between the words of interviews on

miscarriage, confirmed through data collected on Near-Death experiences.

So what does it mean to be a Mother? Why is it recorded, again and again, that

the women who experience a miscarriage want validation that even without a

baby to testify, they consider themselves a Mother? As the writer of this story I

want to give meaning to this. I want to create a new concept that I feel most

accurately portrays the voice of this event. I want to say the main character of our

story is the one who stands on sacred ground and knows, without being told, that

she is connected to life where it originates, where it vibrates on the highest and

purest level. A Mother is someone who knows, without being told, what love is,

and where it can be found.

The women of our story earn their right to be called a Mother by standing in a

position of honor and partaking of a sacred phenomenon, no matter how her story

ends. When the umbilical cord of the experience is prematurely cut, through

miscarriage, there is a place she will sit, for a spell, and ponder what she has

been shown. Shock is not the beginning of a “stage,” it is the arms that hold her,

the shield that protects her, and the lens in which she views what she has seen. Is

it her job to make sense of the event? Is it her job to find her way among a tangled

web of confusing emotions, mixed messages, and unknown territory?

This story is told to reveal to our readers an understanding of the places a

miscarriage takes you. When the connection to this life energy that you shared

with your baby is severed, you are left standing there wondering, why. You ask

doctors what happened, blame yourself or seek physiological reasons. What if

the answer is more universal, no matter how your story ends. The more women

tell their story, the more the phenomenon of the near-death experience of a

miscarriage is understood, and the more the relationship between a Mother and

her baby is becoming common knowledge. A knowledge that no longer needs to

be unspoken.