'Will he call me Mum?'

This is a qualitative study that aimed to understand the experiences of imprisoned mothers who went through the process of separation from their children born in prison. Two women participated in the study through semi-structured interviews. The results, grouped into categories of analysis, revealed, among other things, the meanings that mothers attribute to motherhood; the daily difficulties of exercising maternal practices and monitoring their children's development as they wished, given the context of imprisonment; and the feelings involved at the moment of separation, as well as their reflections on their current experiences.