Child of Mine is one of the few lullabies I remember from my own childhood. My mom didn’t sing much to us but she played recorded music a lot and I remember Carole King’s recording on a Children’s Lullaby compilation CD being played often. As soon as I found out I was pregnant, I thought I needed to learn how to sing this song. I’m notoriously bad at memorizing or knowing lyrics, yes an occupational hazard, so I thought I should start early in order to have some songs to sing to our baby. My mom even got out the original cd which she had held onto for decades. Everything was feeling very hopeful and exciting.

But then, five months into my pregnancy, my mom suffered a massive and debilitating hemorrhagic stroke. Twenty minutes after my dad called telling me she was in an ambulance, my husband and I were in the car driving 9 hours north to Lansing, MI. We threw wet laundry in a trash bag, got in the car and I wouldn’t come home again until the end of my pregnancy. She was in an induced coma for weeks, in the hospital for months, completely lost her ability to speak and her entire right side became paralyzed. Due to the pandemic, only one person was allowed in the hospital room at a time. So I spent many hours alone, day in and day out, staring at my mother’s lifeless body, not knowing if and how she’d return to us.

I talked to my mom incessantly through this time, hoping she could hear me and remember she had so much to fight for. I sang Child of Mine to her every day, multiple times a day, thankful I could remember the lyrics, willing her to come back as herself. By the time my baby was born, I had spent multiple stressful months watching my mom struggle to slowly regain her cognition, speech and mobility as my belly swelled with the growth of my first child. My mom had made miraculous gains in a short time but still had a long, unsure recovery ahead of her.

We recorded this video a week before my due date. At this point, heading into giving birth for the first time, I was exhausted, raw and scared but thankful I could at least call my mom on the phone and have a slow, pieced together conversation. Every other plan had changed. She would no longer be coming to visit, no longer able to help and care for me through my transition into motherhood, no longer able to pick up and carry her first grand baby. But she was still here and working hard to keep regaining it all. The last verse of Child of Mine will forever feel incredibly poignant for my daughters entrance into this world:

“I know the times you’re born in, may not have been the best,
but you can make the times to come better than the rest.”

Now, five months into my daughter's life, I sing Child of Mine to her daily. It’s one of only a few fool proof songs I can successfully calm her down with. She often looks at me with this little smile, a look of wonder, transfixed, like she’s heard it before. When I took my daughter to visit my mom, I sang it to her again, holding her in my arms as my mom sat on the couch looking on at us. My daughter smiled and cooed in wonder the same way she usually did but this time she wasn’t looking up at me. This time she held her grandmother’s gaze the entire song.