Maybe I’m just biased because I’m a mother myself, but I believe it’s true when people say that there is no greater joy in life of that of becoming a parent. The little bundle of you you welcome into your life simply changes it forever, and it’s always for the best. yes, there are sleepless night, dealing with tantrums… and then come the moody teenagers. But at the end of the day, it’s all worth it.
When I learned I was pregnant, I felt like the happiest person alive. Then came the news that I was carrying twins, and just like that, the happiness doubled. However, my joy didn’t last long.
Only one of the babies survived during childbirth, and although I became a mother and it was supposed to be the happiest day in my life, my heart was aching at the same time.
There were people who tried to console me by saying that my son was still a baby, and that I didn’t even get the chance to hold him, but what they didn’t know was that it didn’t make my pain any easier to bear.
For five long years I went to sleep wondering how my son would look like. Was he going to be identical to Stefan? They were twins, so I guess he would, but I somehow learnt to leave with the thought that I would never learn that.
Whenever I had Stefan in my arms, I somehow tried to make piece with the absence of my other child. But I simply got used to mothering around the missing piece. You’d be surprised at what the human heart can get used to, because grief, when it doesn’t have another choice, turns into routine.
And then, on an ordinary Sunday at the local playground we visited each week, everything I thought I knew unraveled.
The Day They Told Me
My pregnancy was complicated from the start. By the time I was twenty-eight weeks pregnant, my blood pressure was so high that my doctor advised bed rest. I mostly spent my days lying on my side and talking to my unborn babies. I somehow knew they could sense me and hear my words.
“Hold on, boys. Mommy’s right here.”
I wanted them to know that despite everything, I was fighting for them.
I had my boys three weeks premature in what felt like whirlwind of white lights and doctors running around me. At that moment, I felt like I was part of some medical drama, because honestly, the experience was far less peaceful than I had ever imagined. The nurses were rushing, and there was a doctor who told me how to breath and another one who told me not to push yet.
Then out of the blue, I heard one of the doctors say, “We’re losing one.”
After that, everything dissolved.
When I opened my eyes, the room was silent. My body was hurting, but I didn’t care. I was quick to look at the bassinets and noticed there was only one child.
Dr. Perry was in the room, and from what his face looked like, I knew he was going to deliver devastating news. Sadly, I was right. He said that everything moved too fast and they did everything to save my son, but they failed.
I remembered I started crying, and then my family entered the room one by one. I don’t think there was a single person who didn’t try to comfort me, but you don’t comfort a mother who had just lost a baby.
I never saw my other son. In those moments, I am not even sure if they offered me to see him. I just signed some paperwork, and that was it. I don’t know why, maybe because I was confused and affected by the loss, but I never questioned anything. I simply trusted them when they said my boy was gone.
Stefan became the center of my world and I did my best not to raise him in the shadow of the brother he never met. It was hard, but I never let Stefan notice I was still grieving.
Learning to Live With Half
Raising Stefan was both joy and ache. He was a curious little boy who loved trucks and dinosaurs, and whenever he played with some, I wondered if my other child would love those same toys, or maybe he would be into something entirely different.
Whenever Stefan’s birthday rolled around and I saw him blow out the candles, I couldn’t stop thinking that there were supposed to be two children celebrating. I knew that imagining those scenarios was making my life even harder, but it wasn’t something I could fight against easily.
What I tried to convince myself was that in order to finally heal, I shouldn’t have looked back.
The Playground
One Sunday morning, I took Stefan to the nearby playground. We visited it often, since it was always filled with kids his age he could make friends with and have some fun. Honestly, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but it turned out everything about that day was all but ordinary.
At one point, Stefan was on the swing, laughing and having a blast, when his little face turned serious all of a sudden. He looked at a boy around his age at the opposite side of the playground.
“He was in your belly with me,” Stefan said.
I knew kids say funny things sometimes since their imagination is running wild, but he never knew I was carrying twins. He was just too young to understand that. But, something about Stefan’s excitement over that boy made me look.
The boy had curls, just like Stefan’s, but many children do. But there was also a slight arch on his right eyebrow that felt too familiar. And just like Stefan, this boy kept biting his lower lip. However, it wasn’t until he turned fully to us that my heart dropped.
The boy had a crescent-shaped birthmark curved along his collarbone, identical to the one Stefan had.
There were too many similarities between these boys to think it was just accidental.
Was my mind going crazy because even five years after his death I couldn’t come to terms with the loss?
The boys stood next to each other, looked at one another, and then started laughing all of a sudden. To me, no matter how crazy it sounded, it felt like they recognized each other.
In the meantime, a woman in her forties, who was with the other boy, was watching from the bench. I started walking towards her, and then it hit me. I’d seen that woman before.
“You worked at St. Matthew’s,” I said as I approached her. “I delivered twins there. Five years ago.”
And then, a long, long silence between us two.
“My son had a twin,” I said. “They told me he died.”
After a few moments that felt like an eternity to me, the woman looked straight into my eyes and said, “He wasn’t stillborn. He survived.”
The world didn’t end as anyone would assume it would. No explosion, no dizziness, just the plain truth.
For five long years I was grieving for a child who was alive. He and his brother lived in the same city, and unaware of each other.
It was strange to me that the woman spilled the truth just like that, but maybe, just maybe, she knew there was no way to hide it.
“I want a DNA test,” I said, and to my surprise, she nodded.
What Was Stolen
From that moment on, everything felt surreal, and why wouldn’t it.
We hired a lawyer who requested hospital record to be reopened. There were plenty of questions, and I felt guilty of not asking them when I should have. Authorities started an investigation, which is still ongoing, and in the meantime, the DNA results came, and as I knew already, they just confirmed that Eli was my son.
I felt mix of emotions. I don’t think there are words that can ever describe that feeling of having your child returned to you after years of believing he was dead. At the same time, I was angry about the years they stole from me and him.
The system failed us. What we received as an answer was a bunch of legal jargon, something about gaps in the hospital procedures, and a lot of phrases used to make the unthinkable sound scientific and clinical.
The next time I saw Eli was in a small room. I didn’t hold him, because there were lawyers there, explaining things to me, and a social worker who sat at the back of the room and just watched. I wasn’t certain what was to be seen. The truth was there, and those legal things bothered me.
Even when I found my son, nothing was as simple as I thought it would be. To me, he was my lost son, but to him, I wasn’t his mother. He spent the first five years around another woman he called mom. We all went through long therapy sessions, court sessions, and custody arrangements that lasted like forever.
It did take some time, but we finally took Eli home.
When I think about it, I realize that the encounter at the playground was pure serendipity. And no, my story isn’t about loss, but about the ways life works, and most times, those ways are simply incredible.
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Bored Daddy
Love and Peace
