Bradstreet’s “Before the Birth of One of Her Children” deals not only in fear of dying but in articulating what one wants remembered after death. The dramatic situation of the poem is a woman about to give birth, communicating to her husband that she wants him to continue to love her after her death. It’s written in AABB… rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter. her subject matter is especially interesting because she is depicting a situation unique to women at the time – the fear of dying in childbirth was a very real one, and it adds stakes to the poem that wouldn’t be there if it was written about another way of dying. Bradstreet writes, “How soon, my dear, death may my steps attend,/How soon’t may be thy lot to lose thy friend” (ll. 8-9). She writes to her husband with love and familiarity and asks him to remember her fondly, imparting a sense that the two of them know each other well and love each other even with flaws. She even says, “What nature would, God grant to yours and you;/The many faults that well you know I have,/Let be interr’d in my oblivion’s grave” (ll. 14-16), revealing not only that she still wished him and her family well after her own death, but that she and her husband are close enough for him to be familiar with her faults and choose to love her anyways. She displays worry about her husband forgetting her, going as far as to say “And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,/Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms” (ll. 19-20). She wants to be remembered and loved after death, and is clearly not ready to die, but is able to recognize the possibility and prepare for that outcome. In a way, also, she makes the claim that her poetry is her legacy and a way for her to live on, and in that sense compares it to their children; she both says to look to their children when her husband starts to forget her and to read her last poem in order to bring back her memory.