Ann Marie Borg describes her pregnancy with Daniel as an “easy one” but deep down she had a strange feeling. She noticed that she rarely felt him moving.

Yet, her doctors reassured her that her pregnancy was fine. Looking back, she wondered if she was assertive enough, being in a foreign country, Belgium, during her first pregnancy.

The birth was quick, yet problems occurred straight away. 

Daniel was born on June 21, 2019, but he suffered from cardiac issues at birth. Five days later, the toddler died, in his mother's arms.

Ann Marie, a public health expert at the Belgian Ministry of Health, is one of the 27 women who opens up about their personal and difficult journey of motherhood in a new book compiled by Roberta Azzopardi titled Songs of Motherhood – Għanjiet l-Omm.  

Ann Marie's piece, Omm mhux bħall-Oħrajn (A mother not like others) delves into the emotions she experienced, first walking into the hospital ward, full of excitement and happiness to meet her son, followed by the sorrow and emptiness of being the mother who leaves the hospital without him.

“When I first saw the call for writings and poems about motherhood, I knew I wanted to write about Daniel, but also to write about a situation we don’t speak enough about,” Borg told Times of Malta.

Songs of Motherhood – Għanjiet l-Omm is full of stories and poems, written in both Maltese and English, along with illustrations and photographs, submitted by women to tell their journey of motherhood. 

Themes such as guilt, joy, identity, loss, and even grandparenthood are explored in the book, as each story delves into different experiences.  

“I am proud to be Daniel’s mother, it gives me a sense of identity. You can turn grief into greater things, and I wanted to write down the journey.

“I wanted to hold him, I was in a state of trance, and when they put him on my chest I didn’t realise that something was wrong with him,” she recalled.

Later, she was informed that Daniel suffered from cardiomyopathy at birth, a disease of the heart muscle that makes it harder for the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body.

“For the next six days, my husband and I spent as much time as we could watching over him in his incubator,” she recalled, holding back tears. 

“He passed away at 3pm, and before, when we saw he was getting worse I asked the doctors to let me hold him.

"It was the second time I held him since I gave birth, and he was so fragile. I was holding him when he had his last breath. As a parent, all these thoughts were going through my head, how beautiful he is, how small, and how could it be over so quickly?”

She recalls the grieving process as a difficult one. 

'Daniel gives me strength on my darkest days'

“How do you navigate motherhood as a grieving mother? No one understands unless they experience it and we do not talk about it enough,” she said.

She recalled celebrating her first Mother’s Day by writing short notes to Daniel over the little shrine they set up for him in their home. 

“It was difficult, but I thought to myself, I am Daniel’s mother, and this is also a day I get to celebrate.”

She recalls how her son was a fighter, and that she thinks of him during her most difficult moments, asking him for guidance.

"I know he is looking down at me saying 'you go mummy!' and that gives me strength."

In 2021, she was pregnant with her second child, Abbi. 

"She is now a year old, but she knows all about her big brother. We visit him at the cemetery, and she greets him and gives him a kiss," she said.

This Mother's Day, Borg, along with her family will be also visiting Daniel at the cemetery.

"The grief is still there, but you take steps that can make it easier."

Losing a baby is a ‘silent and lonely’ experience 

Hannah Camilleri is another mother who shares her own personal story of losing her baby.

In her piece, Notes to my Children, Camilleri shares her personal thoughts, which she began to write after she experienced a miscarriage during her second pregnancy at 13 weeks. 

Shortly afterward, she was pregnant again with Maria, and in her notes she shares the excitement she feels for her eldest, Giulia, becoming a big sister, the grief of the baby she lost, and the anticipation of meeting her rainbow baby, Maria.

She will be celebrating Mother’s Day with Giulia, 4, and Maria, who is 18 months old.

“The notes are very personal and something I never intended to share except with my children eventually,” she said.

“But I felt this was my way to honour the baby I never got the chance to meet. Losing a baby is a very silent and lonely experience, and I still carry the guilt of losing my child and not doing enough.”

Looking back at the day, Camilleri recalls how one morning she woke up bleeding, and deep down she knew what was happening. 

“An ultrasound confirmed my worst fears and reality hit like a ton of bricks.” 

That day, Camilleri went back home to her one-year-old daughter, Giulia, which made the situation “a little easier and harder”. 

“I knew exactly what joy was awaiting along with all the hardships that motherhood comes with and yet myself and my husband wanted just that- another child. Losing what we consciously wanted was incredibly hard.”

The grieving process was and is continuous, Camilleri said, but she soon found out one of her closest friends had experienced the same thing, and the two found support together. Taking care of her toddler left her with little time to stop and deal with her emotions. 

“My daughter was my best distraction but also a very painful reminder.”

Shortly after, Camilleri was pregnant once again, and while she was happy, she remembers that the trauma of losing her child was still fresh. 

“Battling the anxiety and joy was an all too real part of my pregnancy,” she said.

“I was so happy but so scared. It was an absolute whirlwind of emotions and of trying to allow the joy and hope of a pregnancy not to be put out by anxiety was not easy.”

For Camilleri, she found it therapeutic to write her feelings down, either on a diary or on her phone. 

“Motherhood comes with so many big feelings and changes that it just comes naturally for me to express these feelings however I can.”

From one poem to a collection of stories

The brainchild behind the book is Roberta Azzopardi, a bibliophile and the mother of soon-to-be-two-year-old, Benji.

“I love books, if I had all the time in the world and I’m not reading, I would be writing,” she said.

Back in September, Azzopardi posted one of her poems delving into her experience of motherhood on social media. Soon she was flooded with messages from other mothers who expressed how they related to her words and many who shared their own writings.

That’s when it hit her. 

“Collecting all these voices in one book just seemed the most natural thing in the world, and without a single idea of what it would entail, I started bringing people together,” she said.

“I wanted these voices to be permanent and tangible, and I just love the act of leafing through pages, of having a special place on a bookshelf for the books that mark you.”

Shortly after, she issued an open call for submissions and began receiving poems, short stories, illustrations, and photographs from mothers from different walks of life wanting to tell their stories. 

Looking back, she recalls receiving these works as “incredibly humbling”, as she got to read many personal and intimate thoughts of other women.

“They were trusting me with showcasing all the beauty, the grief, happiness, and loneliness of motherhood. It made me feel small but also not alone, it was beautiful.”

As an SEO with Blexr Ltd, Azzopardi had no experience in publishing and admitted there were moments that were stressful.

Despite the occasional hiccup, there was no looking back, and she thanked the support and sense of community she developed with the book designer, Sarah Cachia Falzon, illustrator Moira Scicluna Zahra and Ilona Pulis, who kept her going. 

“Sometimes I can hardly believe it, I look at the book and I’m so overwhelmed by the process to get here that I don’t fully appreciate what it is,” she said.

Azzopardi hopes they can carry out the project yearly, to reach out to other voices and stories. 

“The mother figure comes in all forms and we really believe every mother’s story deserves to be sung.”

‘Songs of Motherhood – Għanjiet L-Omm’ can be purchased here.