Trigger Warning – baby loss
There’s a post on our Instagram I keep returning to. You might’ve seen it – the wonderful illustration by @angelica.ch.r of two women facing each other, one pregnant, one holding her child.
I’ve shared it twice (and probably will again) because every time I see it, I melt.
The connection we have with our little ones is deeper than we imagine. They aren’t just part of our lives, they are part of us. Whether we birth them or not, whether we hold them in our arms or only in our hearts, we carry them.
There’s a reason motherhood feels like it changes you forever. Because it literally does.
This isn’t just emotional sentiment, it’s biology. It’s called fetal-maternal microchimerism, a process where your child’s cells remain inside your body long after pregnancy.
“Pregnancy is the only time in life when you assist another person to grow and thrive inside your body and that person leaves behind a permanent mark.” – Dr. Kjersti Aagaard, Baylor College of Medicine
During pregnancy, some of your baby’s cells cross the placenta and enter your bloodstream. They travel to different organs – your heart, brain, lungs, skin, your bone marrow – and stay there. Not for weeks. For decades.
This discovery feels like scientific proof of what many mothers instinctively know: the connection doesn’t end at birth. It lingers. In our bodies. In our biology.
“When I was pregnant with my daughter, her cells migrated into my bloodstream and then circled back into hers… These cells stayed in my body, leaving a permanent imprint in my tissues, bones, brain, and skin, and will stay there for decades.” – @kelsiludvigsen
What’s even more extraordinary is that these foetal cells might not just linger, they may help us heal.
In one study, foetal cells were found in a mother’s healing heart tissue, suggesting they may support tissue repair. Other studies have shown foetal cells present in the brain 18 years after birth. It’s as if our children remain within us, healing and helping us grow from the inside.
And this includes pregnancies that didn’t go to full term. Research shows that even after miscarriage, stillbirth, or termination, those cells remain. That bond is real, lasting, and cellular. A silent, powerful reminder that those tiny lives mattered and still do.
“Mothers have always intuitively felt their child even when they are not there. Now there is scientific proof.” — @kelsiludvigsen
When Anna Whitehouse interviewed Myleene Klass on her podcast, Dirty Mother Pukka, this came up. Myleene shared how comforting this knowledge can be for mothers of loss. That bond exists, even when the world doesn’t see it.
You can listen to the snippet here on the Mother Pukka Instagram
When we become parents, we change, not just metaphorically, but on a cellular level. Our bodies, our brains, our biology are transformed in ways science is only beginning to explain.
We carry our children in our hearts and in our cells.
I will always be in awe of our bodies and what they’re capable of. We really are superhuman without even realising it.