The Receiving and Losing of Our Child
We had been married about five years. Both of us had been completely content and truly loved being world travelers. Yet, as we began to approach our 30’s we started thinking of children. If we were going to have children, surely, we needed to get started on that. We lived in an area that was wrought with miscarriages. We had friends that had five, six, seven miscarriages. Accordingly, our prayers began to be along the lines of asking the Lord to spare us that heartbreak; that if it was not His will for us to have children, then please, please, spare us from even wanting them. However, if He wanted us to have children, then would He give us the desire for them when it was time.
Within two weeks, my husband found himself driving home from work picking out baby names and I found myself disappointed when it was physically obvious we were not pregnant, if you catch my drift. I was just about to graduate from seminary. In fact, I graduated on Saturday and based on the development of the baby, we were pregnant the next day! Wow, does God move fast sometimes! We received the desire and the child within a matter of weeks. That goes to show he often put thoughts in your head to get you where and when you need to be.
The first couple of months went smoothly. I began researching doctors and made an appointment. At the first appointment he walks in, makes introductions and begins the exam. The first thing he does is to mash really hard with a couple of fingers of both hands on my abdomen. I feel a very sharp pain. They do an ultrasound and we see the baby convulsing. It was horrible.
Just before this, the Lord had impressed a scripture on my heart and mind. Upon looking it up, it was a scripture about the Lord being with you in a dark season and seeing you through. It’s comforting because it tells you that He’s not surprised by the tragedy and that He has a plan for redemption.
It took a couple of weeks for the baby to die and pass but eventually I went to the ER and it was confirmed the baby had passed away. Coincidentally, the random doctor I’m given in the ER is the same doctor that I was scheduled to go and see that very same week to be my new OB. I love God ‘coincidences.’
I’m just into my second trimester at this point. We go home from the ER and wait for labor to begin on it’s own. It only takes a day but it was the longest day. The feelings that are running through your mind, knowing your child is dead inside of you are overwhelmingly awful. It was 24 hours of weeping and sobbing. So much heartbreak. So much fear.
That event is indelibly etched in our minds. Understand, I come from a medical family so it wasn’t physically necessary to be in the hospital to deliver this tiny little baby. It never occurred to me that we couldn’t handle it. Although, now, I can’t fathom my own child going through that at home. It knit our hearts together even deeper because there was no one else to buffer the suffering, just my husband and me. It was totally up to him to care for me. Even though he had no clue how, it was enough to be together.
In our grieving, we had a little wake with just the two of us that was very healing. Grief is so sneaky. One minute you’re fine and the next you’re sobbing. You also find yourself extremely tired for ‘no reason.’ Give yourself the grace to go through this process. For those whom you love that are going through grief, know that you don’t have to try and fix it. Simply be near them so they are not alone. Hold them if they’ll let you ( it may not be time). Let them verbally process, yell, cry. Whatever they need. Let the tears flow and keep talking to God and it will get better.
Because we delivered at home and because I didn’t go back to the doctor for a followup to the delivery, no one was there to tell us they recommend you wait 6 months before trying to get pregnant again to let the womb recover fully. As such, it didn’t occur to us and we were pregnant within two weeks. Apparently, you are really fertile after a miscarriage. We delivered that child at 41 weeks but it was a very long, very scary pregnancy.
With the exception of those two weeks, I had two first trimesters right in a row, talk about hell ! That’s 54 weeks being pregnant out of 56. That’s more than a year pregnant! I guess that’s another reason they tell you to wait six months.
After you’ve had a miscarriage, every day you are pregnant brings fear, fear of losing the baby again. In the Lord, I suppose you don’t have to have constant fear, but at that time, I didn’t know about Freedom prayer/ministry.
In case you’re wondering, I never pursued medical negligence on the first doctor. In my thinking, there was no way it could be proven that he killed my child. He would say it was already dying and I would say he caused it. The court case would have drug on for at least a year and caused nothing but strain, stress, heartache and possibly even destroyed our marriage from the stress.
Furthermore, I chose to put my trust in the Lord’s ability to redeem. There are a lot of genetic disorders in our family. I had prayed many times asking the Lord to spare me from a child with one of these disorders. I just didn’t think i could handle it. So, for all I knew, I would have been suing someone for being an answer to my prayer. No matter how horrible this was, it’s possible that I asked for it. To some of you, that will sound absolutely horrible and even condemning of God to say that He would kill my child. I can’t fix that for you. I can’t wrap that up in a tidy little box with a box.
Yes, this very well could have been the work of the devil. If that’s the case, then God redeemed it by giving us two more children and no more miscarriages. But, what if? What if this child was so genetically damaged that I thought I couldn’t handle it AND I had asked God to pass that cup from me? I had also long pleaded with the Lord that I would never have a child that wouldn’t accept Him. I had prayed or said many times in my life that God should kill my child rather than let them go to Hell. The heartbreak of a miscarriage is a thousand times less than the heartbreak of a lifetime of watching someone you love reject God’s gift of salvation, worrying for their eternity.
Ask for the desires of your heart and for what you need and trust God to know which ones to answer. Trust God to redeem your heartbreak even when He gives you that for which you ask. He can handle the job.