The Healing Power of Birth

By Tessa Prendergast

Last year, my father died.

Last year, my daughter was born.

Last year, these two life altering events happened within three months of one another and are now forever intertwined in my heart. I can’t think of one event without thinking of the other, which is the way I want it.

My memories of his death will forever be softened by the baby I held on tight to then. My memories of her birth remind me not just of the beginning of her precious life, but of my father's whole life. And that he once held tight to me, his baby daughter.

My father’s health began its final descent at around the same time as my pregnancy began. For nine months while my body created her life, his body betrayed him and stole his life, little by little. By the time Bronwen was born, my Dad was eating very little and on morphine for his pain. We made our very first phone call to Dad announcing her safe arrival after a beautiful homebirth. I can still hear his voice, sounding tired but still ecstatic at the news. “Ahhh, a girl!” he said.

Dad had always flown immediately to see his other grandchildren. But this time he was thousands of miles away and unable to travel. So, when Bronwen was exactly four weeks old, I flew to him to show him his granddaughter.

My Dad and I both cried when he first saw her. He held her on his chest and she curled up and slept peacefully. In fact, they were similarly sleepy, he from morphine, she from newness, but it was lovely how they napped together.

My Dad was thrilled to see her smile for the first time in her life, something I will be forever grateful for.

That visit turned out to be the only one they had together. Two months later, I booked another flight, but Dad died a week before we were scheduled to arrive. Exactly three months old, my baby lost her Grandad. I cried because he never got to see her again. I had wanted to see him too of course. But more than anything, I wanted him to lay his eyes on her just one more time.

She looks just like him, another thing for which I will be eternally grateful. His laughing Irish eyes are hers now. I'm still chipping away at the hugeness of losing my father. But having a brand new baby -- who exists because I feed her and hold her and pour my energy into her -- has kept me from despair.

I am a child who has lost a parent and a parent who has created a child at the same time.

Bronwen filters my grief. She has made such a terrible thing bearable and the most incredible part is that she doesn't even know it. She just goes about her baby life, unaware of her beautiful healing power, her uncanny ability to comfort me by just being so....alive. Someday I'll tell her.

I’ll tell her “Darling, you kept Mummy sane in the most terrible time of her life. You, with your smiles and giggles. You with the almost constant nursing and never-ending diaper changes and night waking, and every adorable milestone. You kept mummy sane.”

Bronwen is a tribute to my father’s life: it is easier for me to walk the long path of grief for him, because I’m holding on to her.

Tessa Prendergast is a children’s librarian who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband Warren and their two children, Calum, 4 and Bronwen, 10 months.