“When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes.
Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of October as Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”
Ronald Reagan on October 25, 1988
I have started this post about a hundred times over the past month, wanting to have something valuable to contribute to this national conversation about pregnancy and infant loss. But I don’t seem to know what to say. I am 1 in 4 but that doesn’t help you understand what I’ve gone through.
I’ve lost 2 children in miscarriage. I have 4 sisters-in-law, a mom, a step mom, and a mom-in-law.That’s a total of 8, including myself, adult women in my immediate extended family. Statistics say that out of those 8 women, 2 of us have experienced pregnancy or infant loss but that’s not reality. Reality is that 4 of us have dealt with it in one form or another that I know of. If we extend our statistics base to my extended family including cousins and aunts and such (a total of about 30 women) I can count at least 10 that have lost a child. Don’t zone out on me because of all those numbers. Stay with me a little bit longer.
These are the losses that I know of. The number may be higher but not everyone talks about it. Not everyone tells others when it happens. The truth is that some women choose to walk through it alone. I get that. I was tempted to keep it to myself when we lost a child for the second time. I chose not to and I think you need to know why but I’ll need to start at the beginning for you to fully understand why.
Several years ago, before my husband and I were married but after we were engaged, I went through chemo and radiation. It saved my life. As a result, I wasn’t able to have children because the treatment had done too much damage. I knew it was a possibility going in but it was well worth the risk. I was alive.
After recovery, growing a little bit of hair back, and marrying the handsomest man alive, we started seeking out fertility treatments. We tried several different methods but nothing worked. Finally, after much prayer and frustration, we gave up.
It was not a defeated giving up, though. It was a God’s-got-this giving up. It was a why-are-we-stressing-about-this giving up. It was
burden-off-my-shoulders giving up. My husband and I came to a point where we had nothing left
within our own power to do without pouring all of our money into a treatment that may or may not work and decided to give it up to Jesus instead. It was ultimately His decision whether we would have biological children anyway. No matter how much money we spent on medical treatments, God is the ultimate Physician and it was up to Him to make it work or not.
So we stopped doing everything. We stopped all the pills, all the doctor’s appointments, everything. It was the first time I can remember that I felt real peace about what our family would look like in the future. That was October 2012. November 2012 we got pregnant. December 2012 we found out we were pregnant. August 2013 we held our baby daughter in our arms for the first time.
I didn’t really believe it was happening for a while. I needed to hear the heartbeat for myself before I believed it was real so by the time we knew (and believed) we were pregnant, it was almost the end of the first trimester, which is when most people tell others so we told everyone right away. I thought that if more people knew, it might feel more real to me. We put it on Facebook, we called family members, we basically shouted it from the rooftops! Not only was I pregnant after being told I would never be able to have kids, but my body didn’t look one bit like it had had radiation except for a few outside scars on my skin. On the inside, I looked like a normal healthy mid-20s woman. It was a miracle. We would be able to have more kids!
The pregnancy went very smoothly. The birth wasn’t perfect–nothing ever goes according to plan–but it was pretty dang close. I got pregnant again when my daughter Amelia was about 10 months old. This time we were watching for the signs so we knew we were pregnant pretty early on. I made my first appointment with the doctor, got a sonogram, and announced it on Facebook. We assumed it would all go super smooth like the first time.
It didn’t. We lost Leonard at week 10. It was heartbreaking. Absolutely heart wrenching. Nothing I have ever felt compares to the loss of a child.
It happens 1 in 4 pregnancies, my doctor told me and in my mind, that meant we had 2 more pregnancies to go before we might face this again. After the
D&C, we waited 3 months and tried again. Once more, we got pregnant right away and knew we were pregnant early on, at week 5. We went back and forth about whether to announce it right away like we did with Amelia and Leonard. If we announced it and then lost the baby, we’d have to deal with telling everyone
again that we were not longer pregnant. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having to say it all again. Ultimately, we decided to announce. If we didn’t and then lost the baby, we would be dealing with a miscarriage alone and that seemed much worse than having say we had lost another child. So we told some close friends and family but before we had a chance to tell anyone else, I started cramping. Bad. We lost Sam at 6 weeks, only one week after finding out about him.
Two months later, about a week after what would have been Leonard’s due date, we discovered we were pregnant yet again. We discussed whether to wait until 12 weeks before telling anyone but quickly decided it was better for others to know. This was not something I could face without support. After telling close family and friends, we posted his first sonogram on Facebook. He was really really tiny.
Now we’re in the counting-the-days stage of pregnancy with Eli Augustus, Augie for short. We have the crib set up and the diapers ready to go. He’s almost constantly moving around. He’s much more active than Amelia was and he responds to her voice with a swift kick to my lungs. I cannot wait to hold him in my arms and see his sweet little face.
We are planning to have more children after Augie, as many as God will give us, and that means we may loose some more babies. I hope we never experience that again but I know that statistically, it’s very possible. We plan to announce each and every pregnancy, no matter how early. Now that you know my story, I hope you better understand my reasons.
1. I need support through the first trimester. I was a wreck during week 6 and week 10 with Augie. I was terrified I’d loose him too. Then I was afraid that my stress over possibly loosing him would be the cause of another miscarriage. So I started worrying about worrying too much. It was a convoluted mess of emotions and nonsense. Having friends sit by me and say “I understand. I remember this feeling exactly,” and having friends come alongside me to pray with me, cry with me, talk with me even if they didn’t understand what I was feeling, that made all the difference in the world.
2. I believe that life begins at conception and I want to celebrate that life no matter how long it lasts. Leonard and Sam were alive and life is something to rejoice in.
3. I am a broken person living in a fallen world who is saved only by the grace of God. I am not plastic or surface level. I do not live in a protective little churched bubble. I am a real person with real issues and real heartache. If I hide my struggles and my weaknesses, it is harder for others to see my need for God.
4. I have a voice and I can use that voice to raise awareness. Other women have lost babies and felt alone, isolated, guilty. I want to be apart of the movement to bring pregnancy and infant loss out of the dark so that women know they are not alone. They are loved and surrounded by others who do know what they are going through. I was amazed at how many ladies told me they had lost one or more babies after I began openly talking about Leonard. Women I had known for years and never knew they struggled through this.
I know we all deal with things differently and if you make a different choice than me, that is okay. I would even say it’s a good thing for your major life decisions to look different than mine. We aren’t cookie cutter people who all need to make the same choice for that choice to be right. But this is the decision we’ve made, the decision that is right for our family. We are going to keep getting pregnant as long as God allows. We are going to keep being open and honest about where our family is. We are going to be ready (as ready as we can be) for what God has in store for us.
Today I am thankful for my health. I sometimes forget about the journey I went through a few years back with my health. I often take for granted the fact that I’m alive. But the truth of the matter is that my life is a miracle. My children’s lives are miracles. We are all healthy and able bodied and I am so very very grateful for that.
Mom's Going to Madagascar 