Motherhood After Loss

Motherhood after losing a child is an experience no one prepares you for. It is raw, complicated, and full of contradictions- joy and grief intertwined so tightly they become indistinguishable at times. When people talk about motherhood, they rarely include the mothers like me, the ones who have had to say goodbye to a child far too soon.

Every year, around 40,000 babies in the United States are born with congenital heart defects (CHDs). It is the most common type of birth defect, yet it is something most people don’t think about until it touches their life personally. My daughter was one of those statistics. Five months after losing my son’s father, I became pregnant with her, and from the start, things weren’t easy. Doctors diagnosed her with CCTGA and Ebstein’s Anomaly- a rare and complex CHD that meant her little heart wasn’t functioning the way it should. Despite everything, I still clung to hope. I believed in the strength of my baby girl, in the advancements of modern medicine, in the possibility of a miracle. But six months after her birth, I found myself in a situation I never could have imagined: holding her as she was taken off life support, watching her take her last breaths in my arms.

No one tells you what it feels like to leave the hospital without your child. To walk past the playpen in your living room, still made up and waiting for a baby who will never return to it. To see the tiny clothes that will never be worn, the bottles that will never be used, and when she passed, it was only 2 weeks after Christmas, so to add to it- all of the toys that she would never play with. The silence in my home was suffocating. I would have given anything to hear her cry just one more time.

One of the hardest parts of losing a child is how the world keeps moving forward while you feel frozen in time. People don’t know what to say. They don’t want to bring it up because they’re afraid of upsetting you, but their silence can feel just as painful. There’s this invisible wall between you and the rest of the world-mothers who haven’t known this kind of loss, families who get to grow without interruption. Even something as simple as a stranger asking, “How many children do you have?” becomes a loaded question.

One of the most painful realities is knowing that her brothers will never get to know her. They will never have the chance to play together, fight over toys, or create shared childhood memories. There are moments when I look at my sons and wonder what their relationship with their sister would have been like- how she would have fit into their world, how she would have changed the dynamics of our family. Instead, she is a story to them, a name spoken with love, a memory they carry without ever having lived it. That loss, not just mine but theirs too, is a grief that lingers in the background of our everyday life.

I still hesitate. Sometimes, I say two. Because my boys are here, and I don’t want to make the conversation uncomfortable. Other times, I say three, and I brace myself for the inevitable pause, the moment of awkwardness when they realize my daughter isn’t here anymore. Some people change the subject. Others apologize. Some just stand there, not knowing how to respond. And then there are the rare few who ask about her, who let me talk about my little girl without shying away from the pain.
For years, I carried this grief alone, without faith to anchor me. My daughter passed away in 2018, but I didn’t find God until 2023. That’s five years of drowning in sorrow, of searching for something to hold onto and coming up empty. When I did find Him, it wasn’t that my pain disappeared- grief doesn’t work like that. But I found a different way to carry it. A way that didn’t feel so crushing, so hopeless. I started to see my daughter’s life, short as it was, as something meaningful. Something that mattered beyond just the hurt of losing her.

Motherhood after losing a child means learning how to exist in both worlds- the one where your child is gone and the one where your other children still need you. It’s a delicate balance of keeping their memory alive while not letting it consume you. It’s allowing yourself to feel joy again without guilt. It’s understanding that healing doesn’t mean forgetting.

I won’t ever stop being her mother. I won’t ever stop loving her, speaking her name, remembering her in the quiet moments. And I won’t stop talking about this kind of loss, because too many mothers suffer in silence, afraid to share their stories for fear of making others uncomfortable. But grief isn’t something to be hidden away. It’s love, transformed.

If you’re a mother who has lost a child, know this: You are not alone. Your pain is real, and so is your love. It doesn’t fade just because time moves forward. It doesn’t lessen just because the world expects you to function again. And despite what it may feel like, you are still a mother. Always.

In Loving Memory of Daisy Kamille Daugherty.