Photograph credit: http://www.wallpapers13.com/
The following reflection was written by Camellia.
It was our second pregnancy. My husband and I went to our first ultrasound to find I was 8 weeks along, and I was hopeful since our first pregnancy had ended abruptly at 6 weeks a few months prior. The nurse showed us our tiny child, still just a dot on the screen, its little heart already beating. Amazing. Then she frowned and went to get a doctor. “The baby’s heartbeat is 70 beats per minute, but that’s not always a problem,” the doctor said. “Check back next week.”
I held it together until I got into the car by myself to drive to work. A flood of tears poured down hot and fast. My baby is in danger. Do I mourn the loss before it has died? Can I act like it is “viable” (the frustratingly unfeeling term used in the medical world) and not worry about its tiny heart?
A week later, there was only one heartbeat in my body: our second child had been taken from us. Many tears were shed for many months after. My husband was certainly mourning, but even he couldn’t fathom the depths of my grief, and my longing for the child that would never be. I wasn’t sure who to talk to about it. I remember attending a women’s night that happened the week after our loss where three women announced their pregnancies. The leader jokingly said “Anyone else want to tell me they’re pregnant?!” I nearly ran out of the room to cry in the bathroom.
Even 3 months after the loss, I found myself writing the following:
To say the words “I had a miscarriage” are the hardest words to say, to this day. To even think the words. I think ever so matter of factly of “my miscarriage,” as I would think of “my tonsillectomy” or “my broken wrist.” To say “I had a miscarriage” is to take a medical situation into a personal realm. “I lost a baby.” “I suffered sorrow.” “I had a baby and now it is gone.” And to utter these words out loud is admitting the deepest trauma of my heart.
There was much grief and pain. But somehow, I had no anger or confusion during that time, only peace. Peace because I knew that there is an Author of Life that is always good all the time, and if He wanted my children to be with Him rather than on Earth, then I trusted the wisdom of that choice with all my heart. I thought of the lyrics: “My dead heart now is beating. My deepest stains now clean. Your breath fills up my lungs. Now I’m free!”
However, there was no peace with the next phase. We decided not to do the medical procedure to “clean me out,” but rather to let my body expel the embryo on its own. It was so disheartening to wait day after day for my own body to realize it was using hormones and energy to support an un-living embryo. It seemed like an eternity although it was only 10 days. I was drinking lots of parsley tea and taking vitamin C tablets–things the internet said would start a “natural abortion”–and still my body would not let me move on.
It took up all my energy and thought until I realized: I was able to trust the Lord with my child’s life, which I knew I could not control if I wanted to. Yet, I was clinging to these remedies to make my body cooperate–as If that was something I could control. How contradictory! The night that I became aware of this attitude was the night I surrendered my control over what I thought I could do myself. That same night, my miscarriage finally started.
What came out of this period of grief and despair was a confidence in the sovereignty of my God, compassion for others in a similar situation, and so much gratitude, even in light of that still, un-beating heart.
It was 5 months later that we got pregnant with our dear, sweet boy. It dawned on me the other day that if that second baby had survived, it’s possible that my son with his particular personality would have never been born. It gives that miscarriage experience a little more clarity to see the special child gained from such a painful loss, and I am grateful that the God of the universe, who sees everything, is the one in control of my family and my life.