Motherhood, the Complex often Understated Miracle
Volunteering as one of NYAGI’s master trainers (teaching a virtual obstetrics ultrasound session).
It has been the greatest honor possible to attend the births of over 7000 babies as an obstetrician over the last 30+ years. Obstetric practice has allowed me to share in the miracle of birth as I’ve provided medical care for mom and baby, and I’ve seen enough to say mothers are amazing. It’s worth repeating. Mothers are amazing.
Most of us romanticize the birth itself as something truly miraculous and it is. But Moms are the biggest miracle in my book. For most, they embrace the experience despite fear as the unknown blends with the expectation of joy and blessings of new life.
Mothers worldwide experience every possible variation of birth from the most wonderful that we like to think of on Mother’s Day with the idyllic image of the new mother holding her newborn in her arms. But then there are the most awful, tragic experiences anyone can ever imagine. Miscarriage, intrauterine fetal demise, stillbirth, and even maternal deaths are sadly all too common.
Honoring Mothers in Often Forgotten Spaces, Where Pain and Joy Share equal Parts in the Dance of Life
Why bring up this sadness on Mother’s Day? Because all of it…the incredible joy and the awful heartbreak are part of the experience of mothers worldwide and have been for all history. We do a disservice to mothers when we only focus on the happiness when so many mothers worldwide bravely endure pain and tragedy.
There is a mother whose only time with her child is in her uterus during pregnancy because her baby dies at birth or soon after. She is a mother. One mother taught a powerful lesson as she explained that she treasured her pregnancy because she knew her baby had a lethal abnormality…and pregnancy was the only time she would ever have with her child. Those fetal movements she felt during that pregnancy were her only time with her baby as her mother. My wonderful wife lost her first baby 2 days after birth due to an undiagnosed lethal condition, but she had become a mother and she still visits her grave on her birthday, 27 years later.
There is the mother who experiences recurrent miscarriages. As soon as she knows she is pregnant she starts to bond with that little life in her womb. Hoping beyond all hope that this time could be different only to go through another heart-wrenching loss. There really aren’t words to convey the experience, but other mothers who have lost children understand.
Beyond Celebrating: Let’s Commit to Saving Our Precious Vessels of Human Life
We are so blessed in the Western world to have relatively low maternal mortality. Even though the US has higher maternal mortality than all other developed countries and we need to address the excessive maternal mortality in our black and brown communities,. Under-resourced countries have maternal mortality orders of magnitude worse than ours at rates unimaginable to obstetricians in the West.
Worldwide, a mother dies from pregnancy related causes every 2 minutes.
I joined Nyagi because I saw the vision of Dr. Gronseth that we can help reduce preventable deaths of both mothers and babies around the world. Nyagi trains birth attendants in under-resourced countries with very basic ultrasound skills to be used to triage and identify life threatening conditions so the expectant mother can be transported to a hospital and hopefully survive.
As we celebrate Mother’s Day and recognize the sacrifices and miracles of motherhood, let’s not forget how hard it is to be a mother and work together to try to bring more joy and less tragedy to pregnant moms around the world. Far too often we forget that a mother is in fact the center of human existence…
Steve Rotholz, MD
Denver, Colorado, USA
