Words by Alexandra Bondi de Antoni

A PICTURE: Not Enough

A snapshot in time. A mood. Writer, director and photographer Alexandra Bondi de Antoni shares an intimate, raw moment with her newborn for our A Picture category. The photograph was taken during a time she remembers as beautiful, but challenging as her child wasn’t born healthy. This period deeply tested our author – impacting her mental health, her already complex relationship with her body, and her self-image as a mother.

Artworks courtesy of the author

1.

 

In my life, I was more often sick or recovering than experiencing prolonged periods of health.

 

Yet, my grandmother told me, “You’re not sick, you’re pregnant.”

 

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t so sure.

2.   What is an appropriate reaction to a doctor telling you that your child might not be able to live outside your womb?   Fear, despair, and love rush through my body.   What if my baby is not able to live outside my womb?       3.   The baby grows up surrounded by my fear that it could all be over tomorrow. This fear is my baby’s home.

4.

While the doctors talk, my child screams.
Our bond is fragile; we have only known each other for two weeks.
I cannot blame them for screaming — I, too, want to scream.
I can take care of myself later, once my child is better.
I sit on my sofa and cry.
I sit in the car and cry.
I sit in the café and cry.
I lie in bed and cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.

How did I fail to have a healthy child?

 

6. My body protests, but I ignore it in the face of my child’s needs. Memories of my own experiences with illness flood me. I carried my child around in a carrier continuously. Their soft, chemical body is firmly strapped to mine. We are intimately connected. With their eyes closed, they place their face where my heart is. For hours this is us. We are a unit.
7. I am the child in the stroke unit again.

8.

In society, sick women who cope well with their illness are heroines.

Mothers who master the challenges of motherhood bravely are heroines.

I am not one of them.

9.   There are times when I feel like I am disappearing, as a woman and as a sick person.   The question of who I want to be tomorrow is no longer significant.

10.

 

I do not want my child to recognize their diagnosis as their identity.

 

I do not want to recognize my diagnosis as my identity.

 

I am a mother of a disabled child.

 

I am a mother.

 

 

11.
My broken body is not capable of building something healthy. My broken body is not capable of building something.
My broken body is not capable of building. My broken body is not capable.
My broken body is not.
My broken body is.
My broken body. My broken.
My.
Me.

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