Hope In The Midst Of Miscarriage: Thoughts From A Loving Wife & Mother

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I have identified with the title of this piece for a long time now. Even before I knew my own journey. I thought this title was just going to be an honor to have written on my gravestone someday.

Now, it is written in invisible etching across my heart, drowning in my tears, and ripped across my soul. I knew I needed to write, particularly in this state. However, each new month would come, and I would have hope that it would be the month when I would get to carry again. So I didn’t write. But today is the day.

Someday I hope that my house will be filled with laughter and coos and dirty from little fingerprints and baby food. So I have to write, now, to capture the pain and the loneliness that has been unmatched in my life.

I don’t know who around me is walking through unbearable loss. I do not know if a sister, friend, or stranger will be gasping for air and just looking to read something that meets them in their pain. I am learning our stories don’t have to be identical, but the commonality of loss is enough. 

“I am learning our stories don’t have to be identical, but the commonality of loss is enough.”

This is so unbelievably personal to me. Carrying my unborn children was the greatest gift, my deepest longing, and the fulfillment of who I believe I was meant to be. But something much more sinister and difficult to share is the raw, ugly reality of losing those things.

The hideous darkness that crept into our beautiful home, and that lingered far past any guest ever should. It was my raw pain, my depression and anger. My seething hurt and my lack of self-identity, when what you believed to be true was stripped from you.

Along my journey, I have approached my faith and God in lots of different ways. I do not know where you are, if anywhere, on that path. But this is my reality and my fight to hold on to this one precious life.

God had always been a friend to me. Life was not easy, but I found God to be a soft breeze and a calming physical feeling in my chest. The comfort in the storm and the sure footing when I didn’t know where to step.

So after growing up in the church and learning that God’s dearest blessing was children, and the greatest of callings was to be a mother, I was left a reeling Christian excluded from these gifts and callings. I was finding it hard to see the kindness I once knew so well. I have clung to God to hold me fast, but I have also screamed to Him “how could you?”

“I have clung to God to hold me fast, but I have also screamed to him, ‘How could you?’”

How could you do this to the girl who played imaginary family while she was young? She started babysitting at twelve years old. She volunteered on the postpartum floor at the hospital every summer through high school. She dedicated her education to children and became a teacher. All of this in preparation to be a mother. How could you take this girl who tried to do what is right her whole life and smash something she held so dear? Her children. 

I will never forget telling my husband I was pregnant the very first time, in England, on a Friday night. He cried tears of joy. I was pregnant with Cam. Even sharing their names is extremely personal and difficult. Because to many, they didn’t even exist. But to me, they were my world.

I remember being alone when I found out things were not growing as they should. I remember my husband running into the ultrasound room. I remember getting dropped off at work and sobbing in my office right after. I remember the encouragement of so many, that "this happens.”  That “its natures way.” That we “will have a baby, and I am sure so soon.”

“To many, they didn’t even exist. But to me, they were my world.”

That horrific day when I found out Cam wouldn’t make it was years ago now. That excruciating miscarriage, that I can never fully utter the words of the gruesomeness and the trauma, has had multiple anniversaries. 

With my second pregnancy, with Tulip, I told my husband over the phone on my way home from work. We hugged when I got home. We were terrified. Terrified to love this little bean. Struggling to move on from our last baby.

While he was out of the country and while I cradled my belly holding my second child, I began to have a sharp pain. Instantly there was no denying this pain was far too severe for a tiny life to withstand. I began bleeding at home in the middle of the night, alone. In an out of consciousness from pain and blood loss and being physically sick, my friend arrived and got me to the emergency room. I waited for three hours to see a doctor.

Those eternal three hours weeping in a public room in unimaginable pain and cradling my belly just saying “I’m so sorry” to little Tulip. After seeing the doctor and laying in a hospital bed for hours, I completely lost my little child alone in that room. I saw them, tiny and fragile, and wept at the precious life my body had rejected.

I will never be able to explain the next days and months. Nothing was enjoyable. I lied to people when I said anything was fun or that I wanted to join any social event. I lied continuously. The truth: I did not want to see a soul. No, not even a kind one.

I was traumatized, tired, and angry. I had no room to be a good wife at his work events, no desire for friendship, and no motivation to do well at work. I was a shell, a body, a girl who had loved and lost two little babies. I will never forget them and yet I never even got to know what they were like. The most confusing and lonesome pain. No one else held them. No one else was their mother. Just me alone in a world that doesn’t know how to handle this situation.

“I will never forget them and yet I never even got to know what they were like.”

An international move, a new house, new friends, same story. I did not belong. My children were dead, so going to family-friendly events sliced open my deepest wound and left me feeling exposed. Non-children events left me angry that I have been frozen in this stage I never even really wanted to be in, in the first place. Again a shell.

Questions from people completely unaware of my pain began to roll in. “Have you made many friends in your new town?” No, I can’t breathe when I attend social events. “What do you do for work?” I declined a full-time position to focus on my doctor’s appointments with fertility, my deep depression, and passion projects that might be able to penetrate the rock that is now my heart.

Then it happened. I can’t even remember taking the test, even though I still have it in my bathroom drawer. I was pregnant with my third baby, Ansel. I will never forget my husband grabbing my leg and catching his breath when he saw his little heartbeat. I will never forget dedicating our second bedroom to be his. I will never forget the tears my mom shed when I told her the news. This was it. This was the third time. I had better medical care, I had a renewed faith and hope, and I had this baby. 

But Ansel didn’t live. I wish I was able to finish up this writing with him cooing next to me, or even crying, or just existing. But he isn’t here. And my belly is empty. I wasn’t a safe place for my three children. They all died. A part of me is dead too. I do not want to have fun or move on — I want my children.

I cared for them for months, now who am I supposed to care for? I was their mother, I am their mother. The mother who does not get wished a Happy Mother’s Day. The mother that friends and family slowly distance themselves from when they want to be free to openly enjoy their new babies. The mother that is clenching her fists at children’s birthday parties. The mother who is stuck between the pain of new baby announcements and the anguish of being left out from them. The mother who feels alone in every room. Alone because her reality has been shattered, her dreams completely disregarded, and her purpose in shambles. If life is God’s greatest gift, then where does that leave her?

Loss comes in lots of different forms. I am just here to share my experience and offer a hand to the girls like me. It’s ugly and hard. It’s lonely and excruciating. Some may forget about your pain. Some may never know. But I do. I see you. I am you. And somehow we will make it. Somehow we will continue on. And some of us will one day have what our hearts long for: the fulfillment of our life’s work, children.

“Some may forget about your pain. Some may never know. But I do. I see you. I am you.”

But I cannot promise that you will. It is not guaranteed. So, I am here writing because it’s what I can do. I can look for my talents, my passions, and my blessings. I can carry my hurt as I photograph in honor of Ansel. I can smile as I place fresh flowers in my home in honor of Tulip. And I can travel and dream of my home in England in honor of Cam.

My babies have been laid to rest in different parts of the world, but their mother is still living. And I am working to be the mother they can all be proud of. And there is no shame in crying while I do it. 

I am not here to spread misery. I am writing somehow to give hope. It doesn’t feel like that right now. Is writing just to say you are not alone purpose enough? Is remembering at the end of this that I am blessed with lots of things and telling you I am thankful for my life enough to leave this on a happy note?

In my faith it is written that God knew children in the womb — He knew them (Psalm 139:13-16). I was not the only one to carry and care for them. God did too, and He loved them very much. They did exist and they had little lives and that’s why it matters. That's why I miss them.

“I was not the only one to carry and care for them. God did too, and He loved them very much.”

But in anger I remember that even Jesus cried out, “God why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). So even when I yell at God and ask why or how could you? those questions have been asked by Jesus himself. He knows the anguish of loss and the feeling that God’s back had been turned.

Thankfully, His spirit also comforts (2 Corinthians 1: 3-4), holding me alone in the hospital, or numb in a crowded room. He comforts my innermost part. And He can because He knew Cam, Tulip, and Ansel, too. And He comforts because this is not the way life is supposed to be.

It’s hard to remember these truths in pain, but they are true. I wish God would have reached down and saved even one of my babies. I wish He would have broken the fabric of life and existence to stop the world and give me a living child.

But I continue to learn he isn’t withholding those great blessings from me and sending me curses. He is knowing, angry, and comforting alongside me all at the same time as I experience this broken life. It is not that His power is limited, but that He limits Himself so we can be free to have our own life, an abundant life, but a life that also comes with loss.

“He is knowing, angry, and comforting alongside me all at the same time as I experience this broken life.”

I hope this served someone well. It is just my experience. And it is lacking so many of the gory and painful details. But it’s what I could write. It’s what came out when I gasped for air. It’s my heart and my pain, it’s my story.

To those empty-handed mothers, I love you and I am so very sorry. May you find comfort in the words of another letting you know, you are not alone.

From,

A Loving Wife and Mother