Trigger Warning – baby loss
There’s a post on our Instagram that I keep going back to. You might have seen it – the incredible illustration by @angelica.ch.r of two women standing facing each other, one pregnant and one holding her child.
I’ve now posted it twice (and probably will post it a few times more) because every time I see it, it really speaks to me. ❤️
The connection with our little ones is so much more real than we think. They really are physically a part of us and we forever hold our little ones within us, whether we birth them or not.
It has a name, Fetal-maternal microchimerism and when Anna Whitehouse recently interviewed Myleene Klass on her podcast, Dirty Mother Pukka, this is something that came up and was so beautifully put by Myleene. To know this when you’ve grown a child that never made it into the world can hold great comfort.
You can listen to the snippet here on the Mother Pukka Instagram
We carry them for a lot longer than 9 months
I’m not going to try and rewrite what has already been written so well by others, so these are words written by @kelsiludvigsen
When I was pregnant with my daughter her cells migrated into my bloodstream and then circled back into hers. For 41 weeks our cells merged and crossed and after she was born these cells stayed in my body, leaving a permanent imprint in my tissues, bones, brain, and skin, and will stay there for decades.
@kelsiludvigsen
And every child I have after will leave a similar imprint on my body. Even if a pregnancy doesn’t go to full term, these cells still migrate into your bloodstream. Research has shown that if a mother’s heart is injured, fetal cells will rush to the site of the injury and change into different types of cells that specialize in mending the heart! Studies have also shown cells from a fetus in a mothers brain 18 years after she gave birth!
Mothers have always intuitively felt their child even when they are not there, now there is scientific proof that we carry them for years and years even after we have birthed them. I know my body held and made my daughter, but she too made me. Leaving pieces of herself to forever flow through my body and heal me in ways I am only still trying to understand. Forever grateful for her not only being my teacher but also my healer.
If you’re curious to learn more, google “Fetal-maternal microchimerism”
I will be forever in awe of our bodies and what they’re capable of. We really are superhuman without even realising it.
Charli
x
