Sharing My Heart

(Sorry in advance for the formatting on this post...it was the only way it worked to post half of this long post.) Last week at MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), I had the opportunity to share our story of loss. Our topic for the meeting was miscarriage and infertility. The morning consisted of me sharing about when we lost our baby, then we had speakers from H.O.P.E. Ministry to educate us on miscarriage and infertility, and another mom from our group shared about their experience with adding to their family through adoption. God did an amazing job orchestrating this MOPS meeting. (As if I should expect anything less:)) It had been on my heart since the fall that the difficult topic of miscarriage and infertility would be beneficial for our MOPS group. The idea took hold after a discussion with our pastor and his urging that I should consider being the speaker on the topic. I was very unsure at the time. Every time the thought crossed my mind, the butterflies started in my stomach and my mind spun. There was so much to share, but was I the right person to share it? I wasn't an expert on the topics by any means. Yes, I had experienced a miscarriage and, yes, we were dealing with secondary infertility, but I only know our story, not the many perspectives of others. Well, the months pasted and I continued to think about the topic and feel the need to bring it to MOPS, when a conversation with a friend in January sparked the topic. She mentioned that Autumn Ridge Church had a ministry for families dealing with miscarriage and infertility. Jackpot! I got the website and a contact person and was on the way to planning a speaker for MOPS. This didn't exactly get me "off the hook" for my part in sharing about the topic. I could still feel God's leading to share our story. After discussing the topic and meeting plans with our wonderful MOPS Steering Team, we decided to go with the speaker plan that we experienced last week and the topics flowed seamlessly. The ladies from H.O.P.E. Ministry shared from their personal experience about miscarriage and infertility while weaving in information about the grief cycle and tips on being supportive to those experiencing these struggles. Our story of loss and our friend's experiences with adoption flowed effortlessly with all H.O.P.E. Ministry had to share. It was a wonderful morning. But that wasn't the end of God's work, He also prepared me for the day with little stress, anxiety, or fear. One thing I shared last week is that knowing how, when, or if I share our story is difficult sometimes. I don't know how others will react or how emotional I might get in sharing, so a lot of the time, I just don't bring it up. But God had prepared me through the months of thoughts and butterflies in my stomach while he was pulling it all together. And it came together beautifully:) This may be my longest post to date, but I wanted to share our story here as well. Below is our story of loss shared at MOPS. MOPS is about creating community, coming alongside the moms beside us in this journey of parenting preschoolers. But what about the really tough stuff? The stuff we avoid talking about because we simply don’t know what to say. Recently our pastor at Hope Summit enlightened me to the idea that addressing the uncomfortable topics actually leads to intimacy (the close, familiar, personal relationship with another person or group). This is my dream for MOPS: that we would be a place where EVERY mom is welcome and comfortable, even if she is facing the most difficult circumstances of her life. A little over a year ago, I came to MOPS in this place, right after we lost our baby. We’re all moms…we’ve all been there right? The awkward, guilty, loss of words when we learn someone close to us has lost a baby. I knew it from the outside looking in before we lost our baby, but I had no idea what to expect when I was on the inside looking out. The best way I’ve heard life after loss described is that it’s like knowing the day of the week. You don’t consciously tell yourself throughout the day “It’s Thursday”. For the most part you just know it to be true, it just is. Life after a miscarriage is similar. I may not consciously think throughout the day that we lost a baby, but it is our reality. I’m not sure where to start in sharing our story, but here goes… Our story of loss started with an unexpected surprise. On October 14, 2009, my 28th birthday, we learned I was pregnant with our second child. We were ecstatic! We had been trying for an addition to our family for 14 months and could hardly believe the positive pregnancy test. It is amazing to how quickly the hopes and dreams for a baby begin. I was only about six weeks along, I wasn’t showing, and didn’t feel the baby moving, but she was already so real to me. I was already anticipating when she was due, my maternity leave, how great Luke would be as a big brother, and how excited Brent would be if we added a daughter to our family. I was ready for this pregnancy and everything we had to look forward to. However, I was not ready for the fears and anxiety that the weeks ahead were to unfold. I learned I was pregnant in the middle of my cycle. I had thought I had a period the month before and that the cramping I was experiencing mid-cycle was due to ovulation. But, when spotting accompanied the cramping I took an at home pregnancy test at the prompting of the nurse from our clinic. Sure enough, it was positive. But, even in the midst of our excitement, we were concerned by the symptoms. Our doctor ordered an HCG test the next day to verify that pregnancy hormones were present and to get a baseline to compare future tests if needed. Our first test confirmed pregnancy and our second showed an increase in the pregnancy hormone confirming that we had a viable pregnancy. Our baby was growing. In the midst of the joys and anticipation, I was still experiencing intermittent spotting, cramping, and bloating. Our emotions were all over the place. We were encouraged by increasing HCG levels, but confused and worried by my symptoms. After some more extreme pain a few days after we learned I was pregnant, we had an ultrasound to see if the baby was large enough to be seen and to determine if she was thriving and if everything looked “normal”. Well, normal is hard to define when there is nothing to see on an ultrasound. I was sent home with the same questions and not enough answers to calm my thoughts. Three days later was a MOPS Thursday. I had yet another HCG test in the morning to check my hormone levels then headed to MOPS still undecided about sharing our pregnancy with the group. The truth was I that I needed support during the ups and downs of our recent days. I excitedly surprised even those closest to me when I stood after Sabrina asked if anyone was pregnant (this was before we used boas to share our news). The support and excitement was wonderful! I was so glad I had shared with the group. But, I also wanted my friends’ prayer support in the uncertain days ahead. I was blessed by the prayers and support from many friends at MOPS in the midst of a scary time and was very encouraged when we learned the HCG test had increased again, further confirming our baby’s growth. We were relieved and looking forward to another opportunity at an ultrasound in the next few days. But that Thursday evening, the same day as our MOPS meeting, brought more pain, the worst I had experienced and this time it was accompanied by nausea. I was finally able to fall asleep but did not feel any better in the morning. We headed back to the hospital for an ultrasound to hopefully see something to confirm our baby was well despite my symptoms. Thankfully the ultrasound tech was able to see enough this time to give us some answers, though they were not the answers we desired. She left the room to consult with a doctor after asking us some unsettling questions. When she returned with the doctor, he confirmed that my left fallopian tube had ruptured due to an ectopic pregnancy and I was bleeding internally. I have never been hit so hard by any news in all of my life. I can feel my chest tightening now as I think of it. We may have had some scary symptoms along the way, but we also had encouraging hormone tests and incredible hope in the fact that we were indeed pregnant after 14 months of trying. Maybe it was naïve of us to not expect the worst, but we so wanted to believe the best. We were in shock. If it wasn’t enough that we had lost our baby, I was told I would need surgery as soon as possible to stop the bleeding. I hardly had a chance to absorb the news that our baby was gone and now I was wondering about our future fertility if I had damage to my reproductive organs. The questions were spinning in our minds as I was brought to meet the surgeon who would perform my surgery. The rest of the day was a whirlwind of needles, nurses, tears, fears, breaking the news to family, and waiting. We had only gotten 9 days to know our baby, to dream about her future, to guess who she would look like, to imagine our life as a family of four, and it had all come crashing down. I was no longer pregnant and I also felt like I was no longer a complete woman after having my fallopian tube removed and knowing that our baby died while in my body. I couldn’t help but feel responsible in part. My only “job” as our baby’s mom was to provide a healthy environment for her to grow, but apparently I couldn’t even do that. Was it my fault that I had an ectopic pregnancy, of course not; but I couldn’t help but feel like something was wrong with me because it happened. I was lost. I didn’t know how to support my husband in our loss. I didn’t know how to tell our son who was already excited about the baby in mommy’s tummy. I didn’t know how to cope myself. And I certainly did not know how to share the news of our loss. Many people in our lives did not even know we were pregnant and then I was supposed to tell them that we had lost a baby. It seemed so backwards and unnatural. I was sent home from the hospital the next day and was very grateful to have my husband home with me for a week as I recovered physically from the laparoscopic surgery and as we began our emotional healing. I wasn’t sure how or where to begin this process but I decided that learning from others was a natural place to start. I browsed books at the Christian Book Store and reached out to friends who I knew had experienced miscarriages. I learned a lot from both of these sources, but I was still isolated from the outside world in many ways. I was still recovering at home and was not sure I was ready to venture back into the everyday world of work, church, activities, etc. The biggest apprehension for me was not knowing how to talk about our loss. Do I bring it up, or wait for the other person to ask? Do I risk being real and vulnerable and being flooded with emotions while talking with someone? I could tell our story factually, but I didn’t know how to share our experience. Those are two very different things. I simply felt like I was on an island. No one else I knew had experienced an ectopic pregnancy and even Brent, who was with me through it all, was experiencing this from an entirely different perspective which I did not entirely understand either. He watched me experience physical pain, he waited alone while I was in surgery, he helped me recover physically when we turned home. He was my rock and my knight in dealing with all of this, but we still didn’t completely understand each other and how to deal with our loss together. Another especially difficult aspect of returning to reality was talking with friends who were expecting babies. I felt like each of these relationships had to be navigated individually and very sensitively. I didn’t want any of them to feel like I was resentful of the fact that their baby was healthy while we were mourning the loss of ours. Truly, the only feeling I had was sadness for our loss, not resentment, jealousy, or bitterness toward anyone else. I was grateful for our friends’ healthy pregnancies and had a new appreciation for the delicacy of life. We even had a beautiful reminded of the gift of life the same day we lost our baby. Our niece, Annalise, was born to my brother- and sister-in-law the same day, October 23, 2009. The Lord truly gives and takes away. The reality was that we did return to everyday life. We dealt with the awkwardness of telling our story and returning to “normal” activities. I was blessed with a few weeks home from work before returning for half days. The transition back to work was harder than I expected emotionally. I guess I had thought that returning to work was a sort of milestone in my recovery. If I was returning to work, I was showing the world that I was recovering and moving on. But, then I read something profound in a book about loss. The author explained that it is easy to see the process of recovery as a ladder, that each wrung is a step closer to full recovery to normalcy. But the reality is that we can’t return to the same normal. We are shaped by the experiences of our lives and our loss is now a part of us and our new normal. Recovery is better viewed as a journey into a new normal. There is no particular end point or milestone we were working to achieve and there is not a distinct line where recovery ends and the new normal begins. For us, it simply got better with time and leaned on each other as we healed. We cried when we needed to, talked about our memories and feelings when they arose, and, thankfully, we made the journey together as a family. Luke had many questions along the way about my health, the baby, where the baby went, etc. And, honestly, it was hard to explain to a three year old that his baby sister had died and that we were all very sad. We did our best to include him in our mourning and emotional recovery as a family and talked a lot about our baby being in heaven. You probably noticed that I referred to our baby as a girl several times this morning. I do not have genetic proof that we lost a daughter, but in my heart of hearts, I believe her to be our baby girl. Our story of loss is ongoing. We continue to live each day with her memory and the impact of our 9 days of being a family of four on our lives. We continue to hope for more children, but do not dwell on what might have been or what might be. We remember her especially on the day we lost her and on the day she was due to be born. And in between, it honestly just depends on the day. Something as little as catching a glimpse of the scars from my surgery while changing in a dressing room reminds me of our baby or meeting someone’s child who is the same age as our baby would have been at this time. Brent and I take these moments as they come and talk about them together in our continued healing. What I’ve learned from our experience with miscarriage and struggles with infertility is • To tell those you know dealing with loss or infertility when you’ve thought of them. I cannot tell you how many times I thought about contacting my friends after their loss, but I didn’t want to be the one to bring it up and resurface emotions. For me, it just feels good to know someone cares, even if I do shed a tear when we talk about it. • Don’t be afraid to ask how things are going. It can feel very isolating going through infertility struggles. And, sometimes the topic begins to feel like the elephant in the room when everyone around you is talking about having more children, etc but you are never asked. • I am a doer, a fixer, a get it done kind of girl, but there are all too many things in this life that I cannot do, fix, or control. But I am forever grateful for a God who knows me intimately, who knows all of my past and all of my future, who is orchestrating my life and has a plan for me. So today I will leave MOPS, not to buy my daughter a beautiful dress for Easter or to start brainstorming about her first birthday party. But I leave here filled with hope, love, and thankfulness. Thankfulness to the Lord who is with me through it all.