A stillborn child to the family, making everybody very sad, as this youngest sibling was expected by all members of the family, translated…
My mother’s pregnant.
My father was fifty-seven, my mother, thirty-eight, the two of their ages added up to close to a hundred, and yet, still, she was, pregnant, again. In the evenings, my father hosted a family meeting, excited and a bit distressed, told us, “Mom’s pregnant, she will have a baby soon, you guys need to behave, work hard in your studies, and help out with the chores.”, my thirteen-year-old sister and eleven-year-old brother hoorayed, and they were so excited, about this new addition to the family.
I was in my teenage years, and at age sixteen, my skin was, the thinnest. I’m already a first-year high school student, and my parents were still having a baby, it’s weird as I thought about it, isn’t having babies the thing that younger people would do? Hearing the news of my mother’s pregnancy, I wasn’t, the least bit excited. I’d gone to school, and told my best friend in private, but after she’d heard, she’d told me coldly, “That’s nothing, as my mother got pregnant with me, my grandma was having my youngest aunt, the two of them were in their month-long recovery phase afterbirth together, and my youngest aunt was in the same classes as me from the first through the sixth grades, my mother was twenty-four years senior to my aunt, she could be her mother already.” It seemed, I’d, worried too much.
The days passed by like those page-a-day calendars, my mother’s belly got bigger by the day, with my youngest brother living inside. One day, my mother pulled my hand to touch her belly, I’d felt that tremble in my hand, he’d, moved, he was, high-fiving me for real. Oh! I was, more than excited, at that very moment, I’d loved him completely.
I’d told my younger siblings, that they couldn’t spend their allowances too carelessly now, that we’d needed to, save ALL our allowances for the formulas for my youngest brother and diaper, and, the baby needs accumulated inside my home, bottles, pacifiers, the clothes, the wraps, the baby blankets, the crib too………a ball of yarn stayed on my mother’s belly, she’d started, knitting up the booties and the tiny gloves, with her face, shining of the love of a mother. As I’d slept inside of her belly, did she, smile like she was doing now? We’d all, excitedly expected to meet him soon.
My mother’s due date was right around my birthday. On the day, my mother told my father, “He’d stopped moving for days now.” Everybody went to the hospitals together, the doctor gave a shot of oxytocin, I’d helped my mother walked to and from, walked up and down the stairs, to exercise, the doctor’s face looked grim, told us, it doesn’t look good at all, and, that panic rose up to my mind, it wasn’t, as I’d, imagined it to be.
As my mother entered into the delivery room, we’d all, paced up and down the hallways, time crawled on slowly, like a turtle, and everybody else’s younger siblings were all born one by one, don’t know how long had passed, we’d waited until we’re all, hungry. I’d taken my younger siblings downstairs for a bowl of simple noodle soup, returned back to the hallways of the hospital, dad came out, with his eyes all red, the baby was a stillborn, and there was a hole in his stomach, with the intestines flowing out………tears were circling in my eyes as I’d heard my dad told us, I really can’t understand, why this had, happened?
Tiny as he, he was, in that small box, without a chance, to look at this world, asleep, forever. After the month-long recovery after birth, my mother gave away ALL the baby items, and the calendar pages still got torn off by the day, that youngest brother of mine, whom I’d never had the chance of meeting should be, thirty-three this year.
So, this, is the tragic loss experienced by this whole family, the kids were so very excited about this new addition to the family, but fate had other plans, and sometimes, it’s just like this, some things are meant to be, while others aren’t…