Some New Widows Now New Mothers
Jenna and Ariel Jacobs had been eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child, expected in September around the time of their first wedding anniversary.
But Ariel Jacobs died on Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center. And in the days between his death and Gabriel Benjamin’s birth on Sept. 17, the excitement Jenna Jacobs had been feeling turned into fear.
“I was so afraid I wasn’t going to love my son because I missed my husband so much,” she said. “I thought, the moment I give birth, is that going to be a happy moment?”
She is among a number of women whose mourning for relatives lost in the terrorist attacks has overlapped another enormous change in their lives--having a child. Some have given birth since the attacks and others will be having their children in the coming months.
No definite figure of mothers-to-be has been determined. They number 60 at Cantor Fitzgerald alone, the brokerage house that lost nearly 700 of its employees in the attack.
The combination of grief and anticipation is a complicated one, and women in this position “are likely to be on even more of an emotional roller-coaster than people just going through the trauma of the tragedy,” said Diane Sanford, a psychologist in St. Louis, Mo. She runs Women’s Healthcare Partnership, which focuses on women’s lifestyle and mental health issues.
These women go back and forth from sadness to joy, fear to excitement, and it is important that they be open with themselves and others around them about everything they are feeling, Sanford said.
Jacobs rode that roller coaster of emotions right into the delivery room, but says her fears about how she would feel about her baby disappeared when Gabriel came into the world at a hospital in suburban Westchester County.
“The moment he was born was utter elation. In that moment, I was happy,” she said. “I know that I would be a better mom if Ari was here, but even without him I’m a good mom.”
The birth of a child can be a help as women struggle to come to terms with loss, Sanford said.
“When you lose someone, you want to feel a part of them stays with you. . . . They still have this very real piece of their partners with them, and over time it will help them to heal,” Sanford said.
Jacobs is going through that process.
“I’m so thankful I have Gabi,” Jacobs said. “Partly because he’s a legacy of his father, partly because he’s just too cute. He’s something to focus on.”
Pregnancy also is a blessing to Jill Gartenberg of Manhattan, whose husband of seven years, Jim, worked for a commercial real estate company at the trade center.
Gartenberg is expecting her second daughter in March.
“If she has any and all of the qualities of my husband . . . I’m proud to be able to have another child of his,” she said. She said her daughter would be named after her husband, but didn’t say what form that name would take.
Of the many burdens these women face, from suddenly becoming single parents to newly uncertain financial futures, one of the most tragic will be teaching their new children about the fathers they will never meet.
Gartenberg chokes up at the thought. “She’s not going to know her father . . . that makes me so sad,” she said.
Jacobs said she will put together a hope chest for her son, filling it with pictures and other mementos so Gabriel can get a sense of who his father was.
And in their Staten Island home, Dawn Shay hopes her 5-year-old son Robert III and 2-year-old son Ryan will help their little brother Jonathan Robert learn about their father, Robert Jr., who was a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald.
Her oldest boy is ready to do that for both his siblings, Shay said.
In the days after Jonathan’s birth on Oct. 22, she recalled, Robert III “said he would tell them about their dad.”
