Dear Bridger, today your name is brand new.
We have seen you for the first time, on an Ultrasound screen. It was like
getting to meet you just a little bit while I am still able to
hold you in the safety of my own body.

I've been wondering if our souls are separate, or if we share
one soul until you leave mine and become your own.

I wonder this as I dream about you.

This is a precious time, I dream of you and the open possibilities that are your life,
while time and circumstance have not yet limited any of your potential.

In this place, we are in perfect harmony with one another-
we have not yet fought, not yet been so angry with one another that we slam our doors behind us,
I have not yet pulled my hair wondering how to soothe a tantrum in the grocery store or get you to sleep in the middle of the night,
I have not yet accumulated the inevitable worry about mistakes I may have made while trying, imperfectly, to become that holy ideal of Mother. I have not yet begun the long ride that is parenthood, with hard choices and leaps-of-faith  at every bend.

But I know,
even now while you are still a mystery,
that I will always love you,
no matter who you are,
or what you choose,
or where you go.

I am your mother forever.

Look at you burst onto the scene,
surprising me with the clarity and strength of the YES that was my first knowledge of you
two very bright red lines against plastic

The clarity and the strength that is you, child,
I feel your lifeforce in me stronger than my own lifeforce-
you are a fire and a song that cannot be drowned out.

Twelve Weeks (First Prenatal Appointment)

Who knew how beautiful a heartbeat could sound?

Nine Weeks, Five Days

I understand that you were not strong enough to stay,
your body didn't come together quite right, your life was never "viable",
as the doctor would tell me. "Don't look too deep into it. Maybe
it didn't have the right number of chromosomes.
It was not viable".

What does viability matter to a mother?
As a female animal, I would have protected your life
with mine.
As a female animal, I attached myself to you
as your cells wove together in the secret darkness of my body.

I welcomed your presence, and offerered for your sustenance
everything within me.

It was the first time I knew what it is
to be a mother to something,
though you were invisible to me.

Now I see how the world can justify it's losses
while the mothers wipe away a faceful of tears
with the backs of their palms.

Solstice Child

You who never yet breathed but move in me,
you whose life has begun in the shared space of mine,
in my very body,
I ask you-
if you can stay, please stay.

If you cannot,
know that you were a wonder to me
for what time we were connected.

If your cells break down
and return to my body
instead of becoming your own,
know that I will think of you often
as I live on.

I will count the days you would have walked the earth beside me
if you could have.
And I will thank the land that gave us to each other
in the beginning.