Warning: Miscarriage, infertility, infant death triggers
Ecstatic is the closest word to describe it. Finally past the first trimester, I told my parents, I told my boss; I told everybody. I was going to have a baby! I was due on Labor Day, which I found hilarious. After two previous miscarriages fewer weeks along, now that I was past the first trimester, I felt safe letting everyone know the happy news.
I was wrong.
Oh sure, there had been no baby shower yet, I wasn’t showing, I had no clue if it was a boy or a girl, but still….
I was very wrong.
Yet again, there was no happy news.
There would never be any happy news springing forth from my womb.
The worst part was, unlike the previous miscarriages, now that I was into the second trimester and “the fetus was no longer viable,” I needed to have “a procedure.”
This is when my previous hard and fast, black and white, views on when life begins, when is it a fetus versus when is it a baby, forever changed, in ways that are still very much evolutionary, not revolutionary. For, to some, it may have been a 15-week fetus or blob of tissue, but to me and my doctor, it was definitely my child.
My child. My child was dead. Dead before arrival.
Dead before I could ever hold him or her. Dead before I could ever name him or her. Dead before I could sing, “Jesus loves you” like my Mom sang to me. Dead before every little thing.
Dead but still in me. How cruel. Now I had to have “a procedure” to get him/her out.
I would go to sleep and when I’d wake up, I’d no longer be a bio Mom. Bye-bye, hopes and dreams.
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It’s been 22 years. I know I would not have the life I have now if I had a 22-year old; that’s not the point.
I believe in restoration. I believe there will be a new heaven for all creation. I believe one day I will see my child, hold him/her, and we’ll sing, “Jesus loves you.”
Dear Holy One,
How often we struggle with unrealized dreams. How often we torture ourselves with imagined punishments from unloving beings. Help us remember you are love. Let us feel the peace around us. Wipe the tears we cry. Mend the breaks in our tender hearts. These things we pray.
Amen.
Religious Refuse 
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