To the Mama Who Has Lost a Child

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. In the US, one in four women will lose a child to miscarriage. Around 20,000 babies a year are stillborn in America. That accounts for about .5% of births. Another .5% of live births will will not reach their first birthday. These numbers are not insignificant. They are heavy. They are crushing to those who experience the loss. Yet often, in our culture, we do not discuss the loss. It’s uncomfortable. Tragic. Painful. As a society, we’d rather avoid pain than descend into it with those who are hurting. Today, I write to the mama who has lost a child – you are not alone.

You are not alone in your grief or pain. You are not alone in your anxiety or desolation. A community of mothers stands beside you in your loss. God has not left you. He is not punishing you. God loves you still. He loves your child. You are not forgotten. You are known.

OUR STORIES MATTER

I am one in four. In 2015, I was pregnant with our second child. Together, my husband and I went to the OBGYN for my first ultrasound appointment. I lay on a table and my husband sat beside me as the ultrasound tech performed her job. She was silent. Blank faced. She excused herself from the room before we could ask any questions, but I knew. I knew from experience that we should have heard a heartbeat. We did not.

My doctor entered the room and pulled up a stool beside my bed. She told us that the baby was no longer growing. She was only confirming what I already knew…but still. They were hard words to hear. We waited for my body to pass the baby. It did not. I was told that’s known as a “missed miscarriage.” I underwent a medical procedure to remove the baby from my body.

At that point in my life, I didn’t know who to turn to for help. You see, men and women experience a miscarriage very differently. While I know that my husband loved and wanted that baby, he almost seemed disconnected from the pain that I felt so acutely. I didn’t know any other women who had experienced a loss. But one in four. They had to be all around me, right?

I reached out to my local MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) Group. (This organization is currently rebranding as MomCo.) I knew the friends I’d made in my local chapter would care for my family by bringing meals during my recovery. They showed up with more than meals. Each day, a different woman showed up with food to feed my family. Several times, women sat with me in my pain. They shared their stories. I was seen. I was known.

SPEAK

I’ll never forget the day that one particular woman came to see me. We’d met before, but we weren’t good friends. I knew very little about her. She told me her story. I think at that point, she’d lost five babies to miscarriage. She poured out her pain and grief and I knew that I wasn’t alone.

I think the most important thing she shared with me was that fathers grieve miscarriage differently than mothers. She said,

You’ve been sick. You’ve been nauseous and fatigued and sore. Your body gave you proof of that life everyday for weeks on end. You felt that life growing. You were intimately connected with that child. Your husband saw a blue line on a stick. His life was greatly unchanged during those weeks. He wanted the child, but he didn’t feel the weight of its life with every breath that he took. His loss is not the same as yours.

I needed her to speak those words to me. I’d been frustrated with my husband. It was clear to me that our grief was not equal. Sometimes that made me angry. I wanted his hurt to be the same as mine. It felt wrong that it wasn’t. But when she spoke those words to me, I understood what I’d missed. He did want and love our child. But he didn’t “hold” our child the way I’d held it for weeks on end. Our connection, our interaction, was not the same. Thus, our grief was not the same.

We need to speak our stories. We need to share our stories before someone is crushed by the pain of their own loss. Our stories speak healing to others. They create understanding. They nourish broken hearts. Speak your pain. Speak your grief. Bear it together, not alone.

SURVIVE

I had a second miscarriage four months after the first. Once again, my mama friends showed up to feed my family. I was given the opportunity to rest. I was given time to recover. My heart did not heal. I felt so completely defeated. I was mad at God.

When I was a child, I knew that I wanted to be a mom. I have just one sister. I’ve always envied large families. I’ve always dreamed of a home filled with children. In my twenties, though I desperately wanted to have a family of my own, I was single. When I married at nearly thirty, my husband and I decided to do the responsible thing and dig our way out of debt before having children. Finally, a few years into my thirties, we were ready. The path was cleared. The plan was set. I would be a stay at home mom, steadily growing our family. But it didn’t happen as we planned.

Why would God not want us to have the children that we wanted? I could not get this question out of my head, and I could not rationalize an answer. The more I thought about it, the angrier I became.

I ached and wallowed in a sense of despair that lasted for years. After my second miscarriage, my body was too sick to try again. You can read my full story here. I did all the things, trying to heal my body, with one purpose in mind. Heal and then try again. Even healing did not come according to plan. Eventually, my hope died. I did not thrive during these years. I only survived.

SHARE

In the midst of my dark years, a friend from MOPS called me in tears. I could barely understand her as she told me that she’d just lost their second child to miscarriage. After hanging up the phone, I drove to her house. I remember that it was a beautiful, sunny day. We sat on her front steps beneath the bluest of blue skies. I listened while she cried. I spoke the truths that had been spoken to me. We shared words that only the one in four can ever fully understand.

That moment holds great meaning for me to this day. It did not pull me out of my despair. It did not heal my body. But that moment, in a small way, began to stir my heart. I felt that my losses had purpose. I was there for her in a way that others could not be. We understood each other’s pain. We both felt the crushing loss of our unfulfilled plans. In some sense, feeling the weight of her loss was perhaps more acute than my own. There’s a certain numbness that comes with a personal loss. But when you feel someone else’s, that numbness isn’t there. I felt her pain so sharply. It was like reliving my own, but without the veil of shock that covers those first weeks of personal loss.

Again, we need to speak our stories. Our stories bring healing to others, but in the speaking, something happens to our own hearts. Something moves. Yes, you feel the pain again. It might even be more intense than it was before. But in the sharing, there is purpose. Through the pain, there is justification. There is community. There forms an unbreakable bond.

SURRENDER

That same friend’s loss turned out to be a molar pregnancy. This is a rare complication that occurs in .1% of pregnancies. My friend was 1% of the .1% who develop cancerous cells following a molar pregnancy. On top of the miscarriage, she found herself facing months of chemotherapy and then a full years’ wait before she and her husband could try again.

When my friend’s wait was over, our MOPS group gathered at the end of a meeting to celebrate with her in a joyous dance party. “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” blasted from the video screen as everyone danced and laughed to mark the moment. I squished into that group and danced with them. I was so happy for my friend. But on the second round of, “I got that sunshine in my pocket, got that good soul in my feet,” I dropped out of the circle. It occurred to me that her trial had come to an end and mine had not. I was still too sick to try again. My illness had no end in sight. I was actually jealous of her cancer, because she’d beat it. She’d gotten to the other side. I wanted “the other side”.

As I backed away from the circle, one of our mentor moms saw me. She knew my story. She’d suffered six miscarriages in her younger years. She grabbed me and wrapped me up tight. She knew what I was feeling. She’d lived it. In her arms, I surrendered. I love my friend, but my hurt couldn’t be contained. In the joy and chaos of that dance floor, someone held my pain. Miscarriage crosses the generational gap between women. There’s an ageless bond formed by true understanding. The experience yields a fellowship unlike any other.

TO THE MAMA WHO HAS LOST A CHILD

I think my stories may miss the mark. They don’t tie into a tidy little bow. They don’t really come full circle. Maybe they seem a bit disconnected. There’s no lesson to be learned. No magic piece of advice to take away. Even so, I think they matter. They matter in the telling. They matter to the one who needs to read them.

I don’t feel the pain the way I used to. I don’t feel it everyday. But my face was wet for hours as these memories poured from my past. I guess I’m saying, the hurt does become less, but I don’t think it’s ever fully gone.

It’s hard to learn that your plans for your life are not God’s plans for your life. I still wonder why God, the maker of all things, would not overcome all to knit my family into being. But then I stop myself. I don’t have the family I thought I would, but I have a family. I have a loving husband and one child. One miracle child. God knit him into being. He made the three of us a family. It’s not what I saw for myself, but it’s no less good because of my broken vision. I cannot see what God sees. I don’t know what he knows. But I trust that his hand is at work in my life. Through pain. Through loss. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, but blessed is his name.

Ultimately, when you can put aside your anger with God, you will find that he is the greatest comforter. He gives rest to hurting souls. His love is unfailing; his compassion unyielding. God’s goodness for you and for me is perfect. His grace is sufficient. He delivers the broken hearted from pain.

FOR THE HEALING OF YOUR HEART AND MIND

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.

2 Corinthians 1: 3-5

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55: 8-9

My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’ Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

Lamentations 3: 17-24

Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Job 1: 21

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Psalm 34: 18-19