(The following is excerpted from a piece I wrote called "The Lost Ones," a memoir in four parts. Copyright Sarah Cummins Small, 1999.)
Mine
Cleaning off a bookshelf I find a small stack of greeting cards stuck between my children’s scrapbooks. It takes me a minute to figure out that they are congratulations-on-being-pregnant cards from our friends. My stomach takes one small punch, and I stick them back in the same spot. An in-between land seems best for my own lost one.
The fear of losing my baby was actually worse that the miscarriage itself. I knew intuitively that it was going to happen. I was never sick, as I had been with my son. I tried to think of that as a sign that this would be an easy pregnancy. But I knew--I knew--and I waited.
I have a picture of my best friend and me taken at her baby shower. She is five months pregnant with her first, and I’m two months along with my second. The party belongs completely to my friend: the cupcakes decorated with miniature plastic rattles; the guesses we all make as to the baby’s sex, weight, and date of birth; the gifts of tiny outfits. “We’ll have your shower during Christmas vacation,” my friends assure me, and I wave them away. This is one of those things my best friend and I fantasized about years ago: wouldn’t it be fun to have babies at the same time? What we didn’t leave room for—although it happens in over 25 percent of all pregnancies—is the possibility that one baby lives and one dies.
I have rarely encountered a family’s history that does not include at least one lost child. Sometimes one baby was lost out of a dozen who lived to adulthood; sometimes only one or two survived out of many pregnancies. These are the stories that were passed from mothers to daughters over a sink of dishes, stories that warned daughters that any good gift might be taken back. Sometimes the babies were buried ceremonially, with their own caskets and headstones. I’m drawn to these markers in cemeteries—the ones that are engraved with birth and death dates so close together. I have stood before them puzzling as to how a parent could ever go on after losing a baby, imagining these women’s hearts stitched back together with coarse black thread.
To lose a baby that you never held is certainly easier than to lose a child you have loved and memorized. Society has no death rites for miscarriage. You lose the baby, you try again. The farther along you are, the worse it is. I remember a moment after my miscarriage when I waited under a red light in my car, late at night, and listened to the bass drumbeat of three words, again and again: “I am empty.”
Until that point it had been a relief that it was all over and that I was physically sound. I didn’t have an empty crib to disassemble or clothes to pack back into boxes. I was left with a few cards, a photograph, and a dozen phone calls to make, retracting the baby. It was a grief that was small enough to hold in the palm of my hand but strong enough to power a city—a grief that, nonetheless, diminished steadily month by month.
And then I would overhear a conversation between two women in the grocery store the next week or the next year. One woman would tell the other that so-and-so had a miscarriage, and the other woman would shrug and say, “Oh well, she wasn’t too far along. They can try again.” Then they would go on to another subject and to filling their carts; and I would add a jar to my own cart and wonder if either one of them had ever lost a baby or had a ghost child walk in their dreams.
Comments
Thursday, February 7, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous (216.249.75.230)
So powerful, Sarah. I have no doubt that you minister to others in a way I never could. I bet you live out 2 Cor 1:4.
Cindy
www.stillhisgirl.blogspot.com
Thursday, February 7, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by debbiecorley (76.114.75.180)
Such a lovely post, Sarah. Thank you for sharing this. It is a sad truth that the lives of the unborn are not valued in our culture. I see this over and over again working in post-abortion ministry. Even after a woman has repented over her decision to abort a baby, and accepts forgiveness for that sin, she still struggles with what to do with the feelings of maternal loss.....Was it really a baby? Did it's existance really matter? Do I have any right to feel so sad..it was my fault afterall?
We have found that having a memorial, a time and place to pay tribute to those children, a time to rock and cry, and name those babes, and to allow the time to really *feel* the loss is very healing.
The National Memorial for the Unborn in Chatanooga is a beautiful place to visit if you have not done this. There is a garden set aside especially for babies lost through miscarriage. You can order a plague with your baby's name (or a prayer brick) and have it mounted there. www.memorialfortheunborn.org
I take comfort in knowing that we will meet those little ones one day in heaven.
Thursday, February 7, 2008 - Amazing Grace
Posted by Lindsay (24.216.187.89)
Sarah, You know our story of losing a baby, I think? It is only by the grace of God that we, who have had a miscarriage or still birth, go on to heal. As parents, the greatest thing we strive to give our children is their own relationship with Christ. As I sat at the cemetary as we buried our baby I remember thinking "This is right, to honor a life we didn't get to know." And then I realized that this son of ours, one we prayed so earnestly for and wanted for ourselves, was being used for the glory of God. He was the child I would never have to worry about. He was at the feet of God worshipping, happy, joyful, never knowing sorrow or hurt or pain.Isn't that what we want for our children? In that moment I understood that death, in it's own way, is a beautiful experience for those in Christ. God's grace is what cushions the sorrow and pain and allows us to heal. It is God's grace that allowed me to be angry at God for taking my child. It was God's grace that took my fear and frustrations. It was God's grace that put Jesus on the cross to take this burden from me and allowed me to heal. Amazing grace indeed!
Thursday, February 7, 2008 - my "lost one"
Posted by Lauren (24.107.137.210)
You expressed more eloquently than I ever could the emotions I felt after my miscarriage. I was just thinking about it yesterday and trying to imagine the almost 4 year old I would have had if things had been different.
Thursday, February 7, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Anonymous (71.221.72.188)
That was very touching. I love your writing!!
Friends of ours just lost their baby at 23 weeks. I've been aching for them this past week! It has brought back memories of my best friends tragic pregancy and loss at 21 weeks, and my own miscarriage over 7 years ago at 13 weeks. Loosing a pregnancy was tough. It makes me hold tightly to my little boys. I don't know how mothers surrive the loss of an older child. I don't think I would be able to live.
Heidi @ Mt Hope
www.mthopeacademy.blogspot.com
Friday, February 8, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by arajbrown (64.12.117.19)
Such a powerful glimpse of this moment in time ... I feel certain it speaks as clearly to the need that presents itself now.
Friday, February 8, 2008 - Thank you
Posted by LaDonna C. (67.187.127.93)
This post really touched me...I often think of the child I lost, who would be 16 now, was it the daughter I always wanted? I question myself on whether I should tell people I have 3 children, but one is in Heaven. Thank God for His grace and healing that He so freely gives when these memories wash over me. You truly have a gift of words, Sarah!
Saturday, February 9, 2008 - Trusting
Posted by HomeForHim (74.130.206.113)
7 years ago, I lost a child early....somewhere in the 8-10wks. First we found out.....got to hear a heartbeat....had a week of excitement....and then the next week starting having alot of pain. My doctor said that "it would be just like having a period for the next few weeks, that's all", as I slowly went through the process of losing this tiny life inside me. And since it wasn't really planned, I think it made it less important to some. But, for myself, I grieved the loss for much of the next year. Not that I talked about it alot. I always wanted four children, but my honey felt strong about stopping at three. In the last couple years, I'm older now, and although I've resolved to trust God's will, I've also had this deep "Hannah" feeling, that I'm barren. I know it might sound creepy. But my honey and I haven't used protection for years, and I have yet to be pregnant again. Part of me hopes that God will someday release his blessing with a fourth child, but the other part accepts that this is His will....and even though I may not understand it now, I trust that one day I will.
Thank you for sharing this Sarah. I know that it can't be easy to allow yourself to think about it sometimes, even though you know your precious baby is with God. I appreciate that you found a way to express the feelings of many.
~Deborah
Edited by HomeForHim on Saturday, February 9, 2008 at 10:20 AM
Saturday, February 9, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by skdenfeld (66.220.116.110)
Hi Sarah, that was so well written. Thanks for sharing it. I have miscarried twice, the first was after my first daughter was born and the second (a ruptured ectopic) when we trying for our third child. My doctor told me my fourth son was a 'blighted ovum' and encouraged me to take something to speed the miscarriage process along but, even though evidence looked otherwise, I was not so convinced of their diagnosis and when I went for a second opinion, there he was.
You are right. So many women have an empty place that society does not always recognize. Thanks again for sharing.
Saturday, February 9, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by skdenfeld (66.220.116.110)
Hi Sarah, that was so well written. Thanks for sharing it. I have miscarried twice, the first was after my first daughter was born and the second (a ruptured ectopic) when we trying for our third child. My doctor told me my fourth son was a 'blighted ovum' and encouraged me to take something to speed the miscarriage process along but, even though evidence looked otherwise, I was not so convinced of their diagnosis and when I went for a second opinion, there he was.
You are right. So many women have an empty place that society does not always recognize. Thanks again for sharing.
Sunday, February 10, 2008 - Thank you for sharing this
Posted by QueenoftheHill (97.66.84.74)
I can't believe that 2.5 years have passed since this happened to me. And I still frequently realize that I'm actually sobbing when I thought I was perfectly fine, after some stray memory of that time just wafted through my head. It is such a hard thing.
Only recently have I begun to say that I have 3 children without the compulsion to introduce the topic of the fourth.
I'm sure those ladies in the grocery store had never experienced it first hand.
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