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| The mythical Children of Lir |
I was planning this blog entry to be very different. I was planning on announcing how excited and a little nervous I was about a new little life coming into the world. We were going to have a baby, and he would be my baby. He was about 10 weeks along.
I lost my baby on the thirteenth of February.
I think that was quite possibly the worst day of my life. And it wasn't until the next evening that my husband and I could sit down and just weep together because we were no longer going to have our child.
Through this whole nightmare I've learned two things. The first is that it doesn't mean that God is less in control, and it doesn't mean that God doesn't love our child. I still struggle with why He took him, especially at work where I watch one specific, pregnant, customer smoke and drink and stuff herself with a drug cocktail that makes it seem to me like she wants her child dead. So why does she get to keep her children when I was trying everything to keep my child safe and still lost him? I know it's not a good thing to think, but it does cross my mind when I see her.
The second thing I've learned through this is that a staggering number of the women I know have had miscarriages. My mom never had a miscarriage, and we live in a modern age with great medical... stuff, so I never really believed I could miscarry. I think God did try to warn me about a month or so before the wedding, but I didn't really listen.
I'm wondering now just how many women have lost children in the womb. Out of all the women I've spoken to only four have told me for certain that they have never lost any children, and two of them are pregnant as I write this. Most of the women who I've spoken with have said “I lost two before I had my oldest.” or “I lost one between these two children.” or even “This child was a twin but we lost their sibling.” For some reason I hope I never understand, the last one seems to be the most heartbreaking.
The day I miscarried my doctor sent me to the emergency room where they rushed me into surgery before my husband and I knew what was happening. I kept thinking “I don't want to have surgery, I just want my baby back.” I knew enough not to say anything and ask the impossible of the nurses.
They brought me into the pre-surgery room and so many people were running in and out taking blood and hooking me up to machines and asking questions and robotically saying “I'm so sorry for your loss.” I was lying in a hospital bed having papers put in front of me to sign. They had already taken out my contact lenses so I couldn't see, but the nurse read off “This just says that we're finishing an incomplete abortion, sign here.”
I started crying but I signed it. My mom asked them if they could write in “Spontaneous” in front of “incomplete.” Randomly enough the doctor who took out my ovarian cyst just so happened to be working in the hospital that day and was prepping to do this procedure on me. She knows me and agreed to write in “Spontaneous.” That did make me feel a whole lot better, but it got me to thinking.
Why would anyone anywhere ever have an abortion?
But! Rape! And Incest! And it's a woman's body!
I Don't Give A Crap.
I don't have a great intellectual argument here, but this has been on my mind ever since I lost my baby. Out of all the women in the world who have been pregnant how many of them, I wonder, have lost a child? How many of them lay awake at night wishing they could hold their child for just a moment, like I have. How many women have been sucked into believing that their child is so worthless that they're better off dead?
Abortion is marketed to girls as an easy way out of an uncomfortable situation. It was even marketed to me that way, and I thought abortion was wrong before my miscarriage. Now my only response is,
“How DARE you.”
Who are any of us to decide if a baby lives or dies? Who are doctors to decide it? Who are court judges to decide it? Who are mothers to decide it?
How dare anyone willfully murder a child who would have otherwise lived when my child is dead?
Several people have said things to me like “Maybe it was a good thing, now you and your husband can be alone for awhile,” or “Maybe it was a good thing, you must not be ready for a child.”
Shortly after we told my husband's family about the baby my brother-in-law asked me what it was like to “not really be alone” when I was alone. I didn't know how to answer, but I don't have to think very hard to notice an emptiness now. I'm sure that whatever God's plan is, my child's very brief life was a part of it. However, telling me that it was good for my child to die is wrong. Accepting abortion as an option is wrong. Thinking that removing a child from their mother removes the woman's motherhood is dead wrong, no matter if they wanted the child or not.
I have a good friend who had multiple abortions before she was a Christian. She was fifteen and abortion was marketed as the answer. Abortion did not give her the freedom it promised her, it gave her time in a mental institution. The people telling her that it was a good thing to abort two children did not have her best interest in mind. They will probably never understand the harm they caused in her life or the guilt that she still struggles with.
If anyone still reading has had an abortion I do want to take a moment to say that God can forgive anything if you ask Him. He forgave my friend of her two abortions and many other things she won't even speak of with me. I'm confident from verses like 2 Samuel 12:23 (Where king David says that he will go to his dead son someday.) that my child, along with all of the aborted children and other miscarried children, are in Heaven, and that God is keeping them all safe. The point of Jesus dying on the cross was to take the blame for the shameful things we all know we've done. Because He died you can be forgiven and not even God will remember what you did before.
I'm tempted to sit and think things like “If I hadn't had the cyst maybe this wouldn't have happened,” “If I hadn't gone on birth control before the wedding,” or “If I had only gone to the doctor sooner.” I live with thoughts like that which I can set aside knowing that God was the one in charge of my child's life.
I cannot imagine the guilt that must weigh on the mind of a mother who knows beyond a doubt that she gave the order for her child's execution. I cannot imagine how doctors and judges and lawmakers and voters can help to make it possible and still sleep at night. I cannot sit by and watch it continue.
And that is how I feel about abortion now that my child is dead.
Goosebumps.
ReplyDeleteI feel so sad for your sadness and your sense of loss. I wish there was something I could do or say to make the pain go away, but I know that's not in my power. Instead, I pray continually that the God of all comfort would hold you in the palm of His mighty hand until your pain passes.
ReplyDeleteI found that as many as 25% of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage. This figure does not include miscarriages that might be occurring before a woman knows she's pregnant, or that are not reported. The longer the pregnancy goes on, the lower the chance of miscarriage. After 6 weeks, the figure is 8%.
I say all this to let you know that you are not to blame and you are not alone. I feel very stupid and clumsy for having taken the tone that miscarriage was not even possible. Perhaps if I had been a tad less optimistic, you would have been better prepared emotionally. But really, how can one prepare for the loss of a baby? Perhaps it's better to be devastated now than to have been distant and unfeeling during the brief weeks that you had with your baby.
Your child is not dead, he is awaiting you in the arms of the Lord. And I'm sure that while he was here, he had some sense that he was loved. Certainly he knows that now.