Empty

The five-day wait for the D&C procedure was like a long, gray corridor with death at the end. Though I had already miscarried, this procedure seemed like a barbaric cleansing of all hope from the womb. At some point during this week my husband told me that the doctor had said that he didn't believe there had ever been an embryo. I did not remember hearing that. But then again, an awful lot of what had transpired during my visit was muted for me, as if the whole thing had occurred underwater. This particular idea made me feel like the object of a horrible practical joke. Should I be relieved that there was no person to mourn? Should I feel even more sorrow that there was no child to be reunited with on the other side of this fallen Earth? I didn't know what to think, let alone feel. I finally summoned the courage to call the nurse for more information that might lead to closure. "Your gestational sac was completely empty," she said. Hmmmm. The word "empty" telescoped through the phone and down the miles of roadway connecting my OB's office to my own home and crawled right into my aching heart. My gestational sac, which had housed a yolk sac on that first visit, measured at six weeks. Maybe that was when the pregnancy ended due to what was probably, based on my own internet research and my doctor's guess, a terribly flawed chromosomal brew. What tortured me then and leaves a twenty-story question mark now is the fact that no one but God  knows when that life ended. Was there a collection of cells? If so, would that qualify as a human life? I know that, as a pro-life person, I have always believed that life begins at conception. Conception is the moment that a human history, with all of its ebbs and flows, glories and defeats, birthdays and final passage into eternal life in either heaven or hell has its genesis. What if conception is the beginning AND the endpoint? Is there a person on the other side? I wouldn't have mourned any less had I been given a definitive answer of "no" to this question. Someone said to me recently "If there was no baby, then I could understand a sense of disappointment, but not the continuing sadness that you feel." When a woman is told that she is going to have a baby, a universe of possibilities for love, life and hope open up before her. She is affirmed as a human being, her place and purpose in the world locked in a certain direction for life. Mine was locked onto two beautiful sons. The addition of a third child meant that that purpose widened by one-third. "Disappointment" is a word I would reserve for events such as a flat tire, not getting the job you applied for, a traffic ticket. What I experienced was a wounding. I would grow as a person, come to truly understand the comfort of God, and move on to praise Him for all of the myriad ways He had blessed, protected and favored me and my family for forty-two years, dangers I was aware He had sheltered me from as well as countless threats only He knew about, in the months to come. But I also had to ride the train of grief into the shadows of night before emerging into the sunlight of the future. It was necessary.

Thunderheads of Condemnation

My world turned dark as I contemplated the most unpalatable scenario of them all: that God had set His face against me. Since I had originally been convinced that the pregnancy was His way of reaching out to me in love, of knitting us back together as the team we had been since I was four, the miscarriage became a sign that He hated me. I just couldn't understand how He could have let me go through the brief phase of ecstasy and planning, all the while knowing that I would be deeply devastated by the loss. I was not then and am not now trying to blaspheme God or question His perfection. I just did not understand. The logical conclusion, at least to my grief-muddled head, was that the bill had come due. I was paying for the many sins I had come to walk in as the gulf between me and the Lord had widened. Some of these sins were so familiar, I swerved into them without thinking and with only occasional compunction. The only sign that I labored under them was a dark cloud of condemnation that hovered over my head pretty much everywhere I went. On the heels of this crushing wave of perceived rejection by God came a second wave ever more deadly to my tortured psyche: fear. If my dreams of a baby had been summarily washed out with the tide, what might happen next? These juvenile ways of looking at my situation and my heavenly Father would be resolved in the coming months as I felt His presence in my life and my home, but directly after my miscarriage they tortured me and dominated my thought life. The emotional pain I felt was almost physical. It was as if I had a gaping wound in my gut that poured forth blood day and night without ever, mercifully, letting me bleed out and die. It was bad, reader.

Tornado of Emotions

The drive home from my doctor's office is another streak of a memory, the colors blended, mostly gray, punctuated by calls to one of my sisters and my mother. "I cannot say that nothing bad will ever happen to me, because something just did," I said to my mom. This childish statement simply underlines the innocence that, at forty-two, I should not have had but did thanks to God's overwhelming grace throughout my life. I found myself yelling at her, then apologized, because I was not angry with her, just slammed by a grief that was instant and almost physical in its power over me. I mentioned to one of them, either my mother or my sister, that I would like to drive my car into a power pole. I am sorry they had to hear such irrational and immature statements. I wish I could take them back, but I cannot. I was like a wounded dog, yelping, barking, sobbing. Over the next few days, as I bobbed around from acceptance, to neutrality to unbelief (when I stumbled upon a website filled with stories of misdiagnosed miscarriages), I was a hard person to be around, to talk to. Well-meaning friends and loved ones tried to help, but their words lit a flame of anger under me as quickly and violently as a match to dry timber. "God allowed this," became "God did this to you," in my mind. "Everything happens for a reason," became "God did this to you." At my age, many miscarriages occur because there are chromosomal abnormalities. "It was probably for the best" became "Your baby would have been sub-par so isn't it great that you are not having them" in my mind. I know that the people around me were simply trying to help me frame what had happened in a productive manner, to get a lasso around my tornado of emotions, but I was beyond help in those early weeks. 

Hope Hard Lost

Hope is an interesting thing. No matter how hard you try to tamp it down, it springs up again somewhere else, like a flower through the cracks of a sidewalk. I tried to prepare myself for Monday's ultrasound, tried to begin re-orienting myself to life again with two kids, both growing and moving on. I tried to make sure that I left no room for disappointment. But even if I could have accomplished that, the sight of my husband in his suit, worn in case all was well and he could go straight to work after my appointment, would probably have let in enough light to give my heart a little room to float. When we got to my doctor's office, I felt downright awkward, sitting there with another, much younger couple in the room. Then they called my name, and I entered the hallway that would lead me to a new chapter. Amazing how three little weeks can alter you forever. My doctor's nurse, an exceptionally kind person who had shared my joy on that first visit, greeted me happily. When I told her what had happened over the weekend, her face fell. "I have seen it go both ways," she said, though her expression had underscored what I already knew was the case. During the ultrasound, I never looked at the screen. Not once. I will never forget the doctor's voice punctuating the silence with the word "Unfortunately..." At that moment, I felt as if someone had ripped my heart out and thrown it against the wall of the tiny exam room. The rest of the visit is very much a blur. I remember meeting the doctor in his office, remember his telling us to let ourselves grieve, remember that I said "At least I didn't lose a child that I had actually known," remember the doctor responding that God doesn't look at grief that way, that He feels for us each individually, looks at our situations uniquely and with compassion. Then I remember, to my horror, that he wanted to schedule a D & C for the end of the week. For some reason I had thought that I was early enough along to skip that procedure. When we were finished, I remember stumbling forward to have blood drawn, tears flowing continuously. Then I ran from the office building, barely conscious that Gary was behind me, saying that he was going home to be with me.

A Daisy in My Hands

The way I view Satan, the enemy of our souls, is pretty elementary. Suppose I am skipping along, holding a daisy in my hands. It's pretty much his job to rip it out of my hands and tear the petals off. He cannot abide goodness and joy. As long as I am on this side of heaven, I will encounter him, especially since I bear the name of Jesus Christ. One afternoon in car line at the elementary school, I was gripped with fear. I called a friend and said "I REALLY need this baby. I don't need for anything to happen." She told me to speak to the fear, which had a demonic source. The Bible says the thief (Satan) only comes to "steal, kill and destroy."  Friday, January 21 rolled around. Matt had asked to "have a couple of friends" spend the night in honor of his birthday. Five showed up. It was fine with me, just as he had suspected. I was like a little kid at Christmastime, looking forward to my Monday ultrasound, having finally convinced myself that all of my fears were completely unfounded. When his friends left on Saturday, I spent the day in a mood of self-satisfied joy. Monday was on the way. I would get my pictures and my confirmation of the miracle that would knit our family closer together in ways all of my hokey ideas and scrapbooking could never do. I woke early on Sunday morning, still awash in the joy of my situation and the impending ultrasound. It was January 23, the one date on which both of my children had entered the world. A date that had altered mine and Gary's lives forever...binding us together with cords of maternity and paternity that wouldn't be ripped apart on either side of eternity. On this date, still giddy with joy, I got the evidence that I would not be having a baby, after all. I called my doctor's office. The on-call physician, whose name and voice I did not recognize, tried to console me. "How old are you," he asked in a soft southern drawl that I will never forget. "Pretty old. Forty-two," I choked out. "Honey, honey, look, you are not old. You are talking to a man sixty years old. You are just barely old enough to have a baby," he said, laughing outright. I laughed through my tears. "It could be a bad egg. Don't be upset, this does not mean you can't have a baby." He had mistaken me for one of the hopeful moms in fertility treatment, earnestly trying to conceive at an age at which it feels like lighting a fire from scratch out in the wilderness. I knew that I would not be trying again. I knew that U.S.S. Motherhood had slipped on past, some time in the preceding three weeks while I planned my child's entire future, from kindergarten through college. "You may be alright. We don't know anything at this point. Put your feet up for the rest of the day," the very kind doctor said. I have never met him, and I still don't even know his name, but his voice will be with me forever. 

Timing is Everything

While I cannot remember the exact date, my OB/GYN's nurse gave me a projected due date after that first "look-see" ultrasound on which only the yolk sac was clearly visible. I only know that it was between my birthday (August 29) and my anniversary (September 4). Didn't feel like a coincidence to me. My sons were both born on January 23, exactly three years apart. I'll never forget putting together my clothes for the hospital, walking down the hall in our home as my husband said "I can't believe this is happening." My water had broken at 11 p.m. on January 22, just an hour before my oldest son Matt's third birthday. The doctor gave orders for Pitocin to be adminstered when I got to the hospital. Jonathan was born with Matt in the room. "Hush," Matt said to Jonathan as he uttered his first loud cries. "That doesn't usually work," the doctor piped up. (It's still not working, eleven years later.) One night during my three weeks of waiting for my "follow-up" during my most recent pregnancy, I read a book by the wife of a contemporary Christian musician. She explained why she had named her daughter Hannah. She wrote that the name means "gift of God's grace." Tears flooded my face. I closed the book and asked my husband whether if this child were a girl he would mind my naming her Hannah. If ever a human being felt called upon to revel in God's grace, it was me. I felt I had made every mistake known to parenting and weathered every emotional storm on the planet.

Close to Heaven

While I waited for my follow-up appointment, I felt pretty good physically. I had initially been put off by coffee, the very symptom that had sent me speeding to the dollar store for pregnancy tests. For the coffee addict, a coffee aversion means one of two things: pregnancy or impending death by swazicki-zooloo virus. It bothered me that I felt I was gradually warming up to coffee again. I let a niggling doubt about the health of my pregnancy take root in the corner of my heart. I refused to water it, however. Overall, I have enjoyed a very blessed life. God has always had my back. When the chips have been down, He has ALWAYS come through for me. I have never lost someone I really loved, except my grandparents, and they lived long, healthy lives. I went to college on scholarships twice. I have a stable, dependable husband with whom I am still in love. We live in a nice home. Our children are handsome and healthy. I kept going back to this track-record of God's favor and to the fact that this baby was the very thing that my heart was yearning for, though I hadn't known it until I found out that he/she was coming. It had to be a part of a divine plan that would dovetail into healing and wholeness for my broken heart. I had suffered for so long from depression, disappointment and lonliness.  I knew that God cared, and that there is a scripture in the Old Testament which reads that he drew the wayward Israelites to him "with lovingkindness"...which always struck me as at odds with the harsh religiosity I have always shied away from. As I sat in my formal sitting room one afternoon, it struck me that my home, which had housed the pain of emotional brokenness for so many years, would now be the site of the kind of joy that is so far off of the charts, no one can contain or adequately record it.   

Three Weeks of Hope

For three weeks between my first ultrasound and the "follow-up" which would determine whether or not I would become a full-fledged "OB" patient, I walked with a purpose in my step I had not felt for a very, very, very long time. People, even Christians, who suffer from chronic depression, have deep valleys which others cannot relate to. We have to keep going, but it's kind of like we are walking underwater with weights on our toes. Everything is muffled. In my case, motivation comes in fits and starts. I don't use medication, so I have my dark days. Staying in the Word of God, the Bible, is absolutely essential for me, yet I have always fought the demon of Lack of Discipline. When I try to fight that demon without Christ's overcoming, resurrection power, I always fail, pulling me further under. While I was pregnant I felt that God was reaching out to me across a divide of my own making over the last six or so years during which I had allowed various disappointments to come between myself and my Creator. I believed He was reaching out to me with grace and lovingkindness in giving me the one thing I truly needed...reaffirmation in my role as a mother. I remember looking out at the wooden playset in my backyard...now instead of reminding me that a precious chapter was coming to a close as my sons reached middle and high school age, that playset signified new life and hope. I thought about a few of my neighbors who had rejected me and my kids...and I felt God had given me the ultimate vindication...he had sent me another baby.

I Let Myself Rejoice

I am old enough to realize that most women wait until they are thoroughly out of the miscarriage "danger" zone before sharing the good news with friends and family. I am not wired that way. I did not wait. Barely five weeks pregnant, I called my OB's office immediately. "We do not see patients this early," was the calm reply. "NOT EVEN THE OLD ONES?!" I retorted. "I mean, I am reaaaalllly old! Anything could happen here!" A couple of hours later my phone rang. My doctor had seen the message from me and he would see me right away. Meanwhile, my husband informed me that he was really embarrassed that we had found ourselves in this situation. Rather than offending me, his comment made me laugh. We had been married for seventeen-and-a-half years. We were hardly two unwed teens trying to hide the news from our parents. Every single thing about this pregnancy was legit, right down to my continued stay-at-home mom status. We had the template in place. All we needed now was our little bundle of joy. I went to the first OB visit alone. The ultrasound proved that all was well. I could even see the yolk sac, although, at five weeks, it was too early to see much else. I was completely overwhelmed with joy. Though a bit intimidated by the prospect of giving birth at almost forty-three years of age, I could not help but begin to plan, and dream, immediately. Compounding my joy was the fact that my youngest sister had told me she was expecting one week prior to the discovery of my own pregnancy. I was convinced of three things: God was doing something special for me and my sister, timing things this way, God had seen my horrific struggle with depression and defeat and He was healing me in this miraculous way, and that all would be well because He never writes checks He cannot cash. I was leaning into Him. Still, when, near the end of my appointment, my doctor mentioned that the next visit would be a follow-up, and then the one after that the first actual OB visit "in case this ends up as a pregnancy that didn't go anywhere," I felt a cold flash of fear. Could a gift so precious as accidental conception after forty be uncermoniously snatched from me? I didn't think it would go that way, but couldn't help reaching out to family for comfort on that point.

My Journey Begins

I will never forget glancing down at the results window of the dollar store pregnancy test, expecting the typical negative indicator. What I saw instead read positive and yet, it was kind of like when you have your mouth set for water and you take a drink of milk. It takes your brain a minute. Almost like my eyes couldn't get the signal to my brain right away. When they did, I sat down on the toilet lid and let everything sink in. Wow. Forty-two years old, I wasn't trying to get pregnant and I thought this supreme joy in life was over for me. Would never come around again and yet, like a crocus bloom in a Wyoming winter, here it was. Several dollar store tests later, I settled into the possibility that, for women like me for whom motherhood is the greatest joy in life, I had just hit the $300 million lottery jackpot. I was going to have another baby. My oldest was soon to be fourteen and my youngest, eleven. A mother of boys I cherished and enjoyed, I yearned for the experience of mothering a daughter. Maybe this was it. Maybe God had seen my clinical depression and lonliness and this was His way of affirming me as a parent, though I frequently felt like an abject failure. This was a new chance to correct every mistake I had ever made as a mom, to start over and to do things exactly right this time.