Eva’s Bond with Lieve

Nieuwe buren

This flow follows Eva’s attachment to Lieve from the long-awaited pregnancy through bereavement, remembrance, and the hope attached to another child.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

A Longed-for Child A Longed-for Child from "Nieuwe buren". A Longed-for Child Preparing for Motherhood Eva’s desire for a child grows out of love, hope, and a powerful sense of what family should mean.

A Longed-for Child from "Nieuwe buren". A Longed-for Child Preparing for Motherhood Eva’s desire for a child grows out of love, hope, and a powerful sense of what family should mean.

A Longed-for Child Preparing for Motherhood Eva’s desire for a child grows out of love, hope, and a powerful sense of what family should mean. She tracks her cycles, undergoes fertility procedures, and organizes her life around the possibility of pregnancy, treating each new attempt as a chance to become the mother she has imagined. When donor conception finally brings a pregnancy, Eva embraces the experience completely. She reads about pregnancy, prepares for birth, and plans how she will care for her baby. Her attention to every precaution reflects not only excitement but also the belief that effort and devotion can protect the child she wants so intensely. A New Identity As Lieve grows inside her, Eva’s imagined future becomes immediate. Her pregnancy connects her to the mother she hopes to be and makes the prospect of a family feel real at last. That attachment forms before birth and is not undone by the fact that Peter is not the biological father. For Eva, Lieve is already her daughter, and every preparation is an act of love directed toward a particular child rather than a general dream of motherhood.

The Emergency Delivery The Emergency Delivery from "Nieuwe buren". The Emergency Delivery A Sudden Crisis Eva wakes in the early morning bleeding heavily and understands that she may be losing the baby.

The Emergency Delivery from "Nieuwe buren". The Emergency Delivery A Sudden Crisis Eva wakes in the early morning bleeding heavily and understands that she may be losing the baby.

The Emergency Delivery A Sudden Crisis Eva wakes in the early morning bleeding heavily and understands that she may be losing the baby. Peter rushes her toward the hospital, but the placenta has separated and the scan confirms that Lieve’s heart has stopped. The emergency operation places Eva in a terrifying position: she can hear the activity around her but cannot alter what is happening. When the medical team lifts Lieve above the screen, the baby is still and small. Eva asks for her daughter and holds her against her chest. A Mother’s Recognition Eva touches Lieve’s face and calls her perfect. The words express recognition as much as grief: she sees a daughter who is complete and loved, not simply a medical tragedy. The first moments with Lieve become inseparable from loss. Eva and Peter dress her, hold her, and try to remember her scent and features. The bond is brief in lived time but profound in Eva’s sense of motherhood, giving her a child to mourn and a lasting identity that others may not know how to acknowledge.

Keeping Her Close Keeping Her Close from "Nieuwe buren". Keeping Her Close Daily Remembrance Eva chooses to bring Lieve home before the burial and to create a grave she can visit.

Keeping Her Close from "Nieuwe buren". Keeping Her Close Daily Remembrance Eva chooses to bring Lieve home before the burial and to create a grave she can visit.

Keeping Her Close Daily Remembrance Eva chooses to bring Lieve home before the burial and to create a grave she can visit. For a year, she returns frequently, tending the flowers and holding on to the routine of being near her daughter. At home she keeps Lieve’s photograph where she can see it and lights a candle. She talks to the image and cherishes details of the baby’s face and clothing. These practices are not interchangeable with having Lieve alive; they are the means Eva finds to sustain a relationship with a child she never had the chance to know. The Isolation of Grief Other people encourage Eva to move on, but their advice can sound to her like a demand to forget that she is a mother. Peter’s reluctance to visit the grave adds to her sense that she carries the attachment alone. Eva’s conversations with Hetty provide a rare space where she can speak openly about Lieve. Even spiritual ideas that she might otherwise question can offer a language for imagining that her daughter’s existence still matters. The comfort is fragile, because it depends on preserving memory while also trying to return to life.

A First Anniversary Farewell A First Anniversary Farewell from "Nieuwe buren". A First Anniversary Farewell Returning to the Grave Eva takes Peter to Lieve’s grave on the anniversary of the day she died.

A First Anniversary Farewell from "Nieuwe buren". A First Anniversary Farewell Returning to the Grave Eva takes Peter to Lieve’s grave on the anniversary of the day she died.

A First Anniversary Farewell Returning to the Grave Eva takes Peter to Lieve’s grave on the anniversary of the day she died. She clears away dead flowers, waters the forget-me-nots, and addresses the child as her daughter, speaking of herself and Peter as Lieve’s parents. The date reopens the emergency and the hospital memories for Peter, who recalls the frantic journey and the moment Lieve was delivered stillborn. Eva’s mourning, however, is not only an account of the past; it is a deliberate attempt to tell her daughter that she will remain loved even as Eva changes how often she visits. Love Without Forgetting Eva leaves a small stone angel at the grave and says she is letting Lieve go. The gesture does not mean that she intends to stop being Lieve’s mother or erase the child from memory. It marks a difficult shift from daily visits toward carrying the bond within her. Peter holds Eva’s hand as they walk away, and they go to the beach together. Their quiet departure offers a moment of shared tenderness, but it does not resolve their different relationships to the loss. Eva can imagine spiritual meaning in the farewell; Peter accompanies her without being able to believe the same things.

A New Pregnancy, a New Claim A New Pregnancy, a New Claim from "Nieuwe buren". A New Pregnancy, a New Claim Hope After Loss When a pregnancy test shows two lines, Eva feels joy and fear at once.

A New Pregnancy, a New Claim from "Nieuwe buren". A New Pregnancy, a New Claim Hope After Loss When a pregnancy test shows two lines, Eva feels joy and fear at once.

A New Pregnancy, a New Claim Hope After Loss When a pregnancy test shows two lines, Eva feels joy and fear at once. Her body’s symptoms and the positive result seem to confirm that she can become pregnant without the fertility procedures that dominated her earlier attempts. She imagines the unborn child as a girl and sometimes as a second chance after Lieve. That hope is emotionally complicated: the new baby cannot replace Lieve, but Eva sees the pregnancy as proof that her life as a mother might continue beyond the death of her first child. A Bond Entangled with Secrecy Eva’s certainty that she will keep the baby helps her leave the marriage, even though the pregnancy resulted from deception and Steef does not want to become a father again. She tells herself the child will live and that she can build a safer future elsewhere. Her bond with the unborn baby is therefore both a source of resolve and a source of danger. At the cottage, she protects her abdomen during the confrontation and insists that the child is real, despite Steef’s anger and Peter’s shock. The final shooting leaves the pregnancy’s future uncertain, but Eva’s maternal attachment remains central to the choices she makes.

During the years of fertility treatment

On 22 July, when Eva is thirty weeks pregnant

During the year following Lieve’s burial

On the first anniversary of Lieve’s death

After Eva’s positive pregnancy test