Over five years ago I penned a story about God's faithfulness, even in tragedy. It's about pregnancy loss and pregnancy miracles. I wish I had time to take out the passive verbs--turns out I've learned something about writing in the last five years--but company's coming and this version has to suffice.
Despite the rougher writing, I hope it blesses you, dear reader.
I'm linking it to Tesha's blog, in honor of her angel baby, Jonathan. Please pray for Tesha and her family? She suffered a similar loss last January. Her grief is deep, fresh.
December, 2007
A miracle occurred in our little world last Christmas season. As this Christmas season draws to a close, I can't help but retell the story. God weaves tales into our lives for a reason. Stories are meant to be shared. God, no longer here in the flesh, uses us to reach others. We are his hands, feet, and hopefully, his heart. May you experience Him through this story, dear reader.
Tick, Tick, Tick
To celebrate our first anniversary, July 3rd, 2000, we drove from our home in southern California to a beautiful northern-California volcano mountain, called Mt. Lassen, located near Redding, Ca. We tent camped, hiked, and had an amazing anniversary week enjoying the beauty of God's splendor.
Oh, yeah. And in that tent--which we should have kept for posterity sake--we also conceived a child. Conceiving as newlyweds wasn't our first choice. We knew more time alone as a couple was probably best, but I was 34 and my husband 41.
While we spent the first year of our marriage enjoying long hikes, leisurely dinners, and lazy Saturday mornings, our biological clocks were doing a steady tick, tick, tick.
Our baby was eagerly anticipated. We spent hours talking about names, looking at baby furniture, and counting ourselves blessed that we were able to conceive. I knew that at our ages, fertility was supposed to diminish; I was pleasantly surprised to fall pregnant at all, given the bleak picture often painted for "older" women.
There was no morning sickness or spotting. It was an uneventful pregnancy, with an ultrasound at seventeen weeks showing a happy-go-lucky baby boy, doing flips and sucking his thumb. I was already in love with the little guy, but actually seeing him flip around threw my heart into flips of its own.
A routine blood test was offered to screen for abnormalities. We agreed to the test; it wasn't invasive or risky. Results showed a 1-in-87 chance of Down Syndrome, which was upsetting and scary, but we declined the amnio, which would have confirmed or ruled out the disorder.
Meanwhile, I had not begun to show, and at 20 weeks, hadn't felt any movement. We were mildly alarmed at this, but it isn't that unusual in first pregnancies, so we didn't suspect anything was amiss.
Devastation
A level-two ultrasound was offered, in lieu of the amnio, to check for signs of Down Syndrome. We agreed to this and went to the appointment just shy of my twenty-first week, more to have another glimpse at our bundle of joy, than anything else. The test began as usual, with the doctor commencing his fetal measuring.
I didn't see the heart beating, as I had in the seventeen-week ultrasound. I asked about this, and the doctor said he would check conditions after he finished his measurements.
Finished with his measurements, he proceeded to check the baby's condition. After a minute or so, he pushed hard on my stomach, and then said, "I'm afraid I have some bad news. The baby's heart is not beating and he's not responsive."
Stunned. Devastated. Horrified. These words can't begin to describe our demeanor or our hearts.
We broke down. I asked why I hadn't had a miscarriage or any bleeding, and why I still had signs of pregnancy. I had never heard of a baby dying in the womb without miscarriage. Turns out this is not uncommon. The placenta keeps producing hormone, so the mother continues to experience signs of pregnancy.
The baby only measured sixteen weeks and, judging from the last known heartbeat, died sometime between the nineteenth and twenty-first weeks.
Next, I wanted to know if I had worked too hard or done something to cause this. He apparently hears that a lot; he immediately ruled it out and indicated I should stop that line of thinking entirely. He said it just wasn't a healthy pregnancy, and there was nothing I did or didn't do to cause this tragedy.
We were comforted by the doctor and nurse, then sent to another room to have more questions answered by a genetics counselor. She indicated that perhaps the baby was Down Syndrome; many Down Syndrome babies don't make it to their birthday. That was all she could offer, except that our next pregnancy was likely to be normal.
There is only a 4% chance of losing a baby after twenty weeks. Why, I asked myself, am I always caught in these tiny percentage categories? Only a small percentage of women get married after thirty, only a small percentage of people are saved after age 18, only a small percentage conceive this late in life (though that is changing), and only a small percentage lose babies in the twentieth week.
At the rate I was going, I would never have a child.
Or so I thought.
It was evening, five days before Thanksgiving. There wasn't anything else I had the strength to ask, so the doctor, a neonatal specialist, escorted us out the back door, presumably so that our tears didn't upset those still in the waiting room.
We drove home in silence.
Advised to see our regular OB doctor the next morning, we had to somehow get through the night, knowing I carried a dead baby.
Sleep never came. Darkness enveloped me. I'd lived long enough to know that life ebbs and flows. There is joy. Then sadness.
I shudder to think this, but I know I may have a darker night in the years ahead. We have to count our blessings and keep our grip light on the things of this world...for we are not in control. The Lord's vision and purpose? It's perfect. That's all we need to know.
When my husband was sixteen, he lost his in mother in an auto accident, also in the evening. This was his second darkest night.
Labor was induced the next morning, at 11 am, and our baby boy was born at 5:30 AM the following day. The epidural, given too late, didn't take. It was painful, but shorter than a regular full-term first labor. I only had to dilate seven inches, rather than ten, and there was no pushing.
The nurse, who had been through this many times before, knew to wrap up our baby and have each of us hold him. I would find out later that doing this was an important part of the grieving process. I never looked at the baby, but my husband did. He is still haunted by the image, and to this day, I wish the nurse had not suggested it.
Addition: This story was penned five years ago, and since then I've read accounts of similar experiences. In each case, couples looked at and took pictures of the baby. Death changes the baby in sorrowful ways; looking is a risk my heart couldn't take all those years ago. My faith wasn't strong enough. I didn't want a vision of death to carry with me for decades. I wanted to remember him as I saw him on ultrasound at seventeen weeks. Full of life and joy.
They discharged me, after I spent the equivalent of a day listening to loud, healthy fetal heartbeats and heard two babies make their first cries. They told me to avoid letting warm shower water run on my breasts, so as not to stimulate milk production.
As always in the aftermath of a death, we were in shock as we went about the business of going to a funeral parlor, considering our burial options. The owner of the funeral parlor waited on us. Thirty years previously, this same tragedy had occurred in his wife's youth. This funeral owner? He was a gift from God. It was a difficult thing to attend to, and he was wonderfully understanding and supportive.
We had the baby cremated and went up to a very high California mountain, not far from where we lived, to release his ashes into the wind. I had painstakingly prepared a funeral handout, complete with verses and an order of service. Just my husband and myself were present.
Our little boy's name, Isaac Abraham, is from the Old Testament story about Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, on the altar. In my mind, that was what God was asking me to do. He wanted this baby, for whatever reason, and my job was to let my baby go, while still being able to say each day, "I love you, Lord" and mean it.
The Beginnings of a Miracle
A few weeks following the funeral, a work acquaintance of my husband's, after offering his condolences, added that he dreamt we would eventually have a baby on Christmas. I barely looked up when my husband repeated this that night, but I filed it away somewhere in my head, nevertheless. I was busy teaching first grade and trying to be a professional in the midst of my grief, which got much deeper after the funeral. Horror replaced the initial shock.
The doctor said to wait two complete cycles before trying to conceive again. I wanted so badly to be pregnant again, that I didn't wait the two cycles. We waited one. Still, it took five long and painful months to conceive. I'm aware that five months isn't terribly long, but my heart needed to feel hope again.
Many women go through childbearing heartbreak, some much worse than mine. I found out shortly after our tragedy that a woman from our church lost two full-term babies, back to back, for unknown reasons, and still didn't have a baby to cuddle.
You hear stories like this, and know to count yourself blessed, but when you're going through your own pain, you just feel so alone and like such a failure. I still wonder if there is any longing stronger than a woman's yearn for a child?
My first son died in November, 2000, and my second son, Peter, was born on January 11, 2002, healthy and strong. I didn't relax through the pregnancy until I felt Peter kick, at seventeen weeks. What an awesome feeling! And what a relief!
My third son, Paul, was born twenty-one months later, healthy and strong. I was blessed and busy. As each of their birthdays came and went, I still wondered about the December 25 dream, but there wasn't time to dwell on it very often. I was a happy mom.
I miscarried another baby in 2005, at ten weeks gestation. While much less horrid an affair in comparison, it hurt just the same. I was thirty-nine; it seemed my last chance to have another child.
Meanwhile, we moved to Ohio and busied ourselves getting established in a new community and in a new home. A stay-at-home-mom, I was very busy every day, and had to put my childbearing grief behind me.
Try as I might, I found it hard to say goodbye to pregnancy and childbirth. I loved nursing and all the quiet, peaceful, sleepless nights spent looking down at a beautiful newborn. I nursed my second son a long time, two-and-a-half years, partly because he loved it, and partly to hang on to the childbearing chapter of my life.
The Miracle
In late February 2006, I went shopping for a daycare crib and highchair. We needed extra income, and I was taking in a 13-month-old baby in a week's time. As I shopped, I couldn't help but notice all the beautiful furniture and other baby items. I floated along down the aisles, not ready for the tears that welled up.
The painful realization that I would never have a daughter suddenly overwhelmed me. Retreating to a corner of the store, I regained composure, then quickly went about my purchases. Back in the car, I cried all the way home.
Pulling into the driveway, I dried my tears. As I opened our front door to greet my family, I told myself that the childbearing chapter of my life? Closed.
God wanted it this way. I was forty, my husband forty-eight. We were old. I knew it was best to count myself blessed and move on. My boys? They were such a blessing!
I made a mental note to see a doctor about birth control soon.
I unexpectedly conceived a month later. It was both pleasant news and a worrisome shock. You see, it's one thing to desire a child, and quite another to be told you're having one, at the age of 40!
Delight and amazement consumed us at the 21-week ultrasound. We would have a daughter!
And her due date? December 25th!
Mary wasn't actually born on Christmas Day. We had an early induced labor, due to blood pressure complications. I suffered post-partum preeclampsia with my first child, pregnancy induced-hypertension with my second, and was in the third week of hypertension with Mary's pregnancy.
I wish now we'd stayed the course and let God work his complete miracle. Mary might have been born on Christmas, making this an even bigger miracle.
Regardless, her due date and her presence with us are miracles enough. Having a daughter is every bit as wonderful as I imagined! Every time she smiles up at me, I'm amazed anew.
Friend, he is faithful. As your own stories unfold, cling to his perfection, his love, his faithfulness.
Addition: Friend, I went on to have another beautiful baby girl, Beth, in December, 2008. Our cups overflow!
I wish the noise in this house were magnified...by two more joyous voices. I will always wonder about my baby's personalities. About their gifts. My life is not better off without them.
But my heart? It might be. In place of more noise in this house, I have more compassion. We are a broken people; descendants of Adam and Eve. I cannot will myself to be compassionate. My flawed heart just can't do it. Left to its own devices, my heart judges, rather than spills compassion.
I believe God bestows compassion; it's a gift of grace. He puts it in our hearts.
And his method? Our brokenness. Don't be afraid, dear reader, of a broken heart. For our Heavenly Father? He's a Redeemer!
