Confessions

The child born after losing a child has a name among the ranks of bereaved parents: A rainbow child…like the beautiful, colorful hope after a storm.

Like the reminder that God always keeps His promises.

For many, many reasons, my rainbow pregnancy was the hardest thing I have ever done. Emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically.  And I’ve lost a child and run two marathons, so that’s saying something.  It was a year ago when I was found out, to my surprise, that I was expecting a new baby.  For the sake of honesty, I’d like to try to explain what the last year was like.  If you or someone you know is pregnant after loss, perhaps this can help you or them to understand what might be going on in head and heart.  Or maybe it will answer questions you had about me but didn’t want to ask.  Or perhaps I just need to write it down.

Emotionally, I was still grieving Arthur.  At each milepost in pregnancy, any joy I could muster was a reminder of hopes that had been crushed or desires I had never even allowed myself to have.  Could I start dreaming when I saw the plus sign on the pregnancy test?  Think about logistics as a family of 4?  I’d been there a year ago and had to shut off those thought-roads just a few months later.  Be happy that my new baby had no abnormalities without those feelings somehow meaning that Arthur wasn’t enough, wasn’t able to bring me joy?  Buy baby clothes as if this baby might actually live to wear them, not just to bury her in?  For almost full year I had fought to be content that God said “No” to my desire to have a child I get to keep.  Giving birth to a baby and bringing him home is what happens to other people (pretty much everyone else in my life in the last year…), not to me.  Now I had to try to adjust to hoping and dreaming again.  I bought a baby outfit just before the big sonogram and cried the whole way home from the store.  I made plans for 2016 as if it would still just be the three of us.  When I was happy, I felt like I was betraying Arthur and when I was sad, I felt like I was being unfair to the little life growing inside me.  There was no safe feeling.  I think I withdrew from family and friends because I didn’t have any feelings left…it took too much emotional energy to just exist.

You know how when you’ve hurt a part of your body, you either purposefully or subconsciously treat that area with special care, avoid touching it or asking it to do too much work?  Limping, holding a cut finger out of the water when you wash your hands, chewing on the other side of your mouth when you have a canker sore.  I was doing that with my feelings.  I was afraid to let anything touch my broken heart.  I would fight to open up to love and hope, then think of some situation that could break my heart again, and be gripped by either terrible fear and sorrow or shut down.  

Which brings me to the spiritual battle that has been mine since I saw that plus sign.  Shortly after my doctor confirmed the pregnancy, I called a mentor of mine, asking how I could make it through the next 7 months.  I knew that anyone else would tell me, “Remind yourself of who God is.”  And I’d been doing that for a month, but my mental conversation went like this: “God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you.  And Arthur still died.  God never makes a mistake.  And Arthur still died.  God is great and mighty. And Arthur still died.”  I didn’t hate God.  I didn’t question a single thing I believed about God’s person and character.  I just couldn’t find any comfort in the truths that had upheld me since the doctors told us about Arthur.  All those things can be true and terrible things can still happen.  My wise friend didn’t dismiss any of this.  She told me that it would take time to find what to tell myself.  That I would fail and be discouraged and fearful.  That God would comfort and strengthen me but that this would be a hard, hard fight. 

And she was right.  I found answers…or rather, handholds that I could hang on to for dear life when fear and doubt and despair ruled my heart and my mind.  So many days, I ended up curled up in a ball begging God to keep His promises.  I wasn’t even mostly afraid of losing this child.  I was afraid of what losing her would do to me.  To my mind.  To my faith.  

I felt so weak…it was kind of like being a homeowner with a savings account and then the air conditioner breaks.  You pull the money out of savings to fix it.  Then you find termites.  The savings account is almost gone.  Then your car needs a repair.  You go from facing life confidently to fearing what might be around the next corner, even if it’s just a small expense.  My “savings” had been spent on Arthur.  I had nothing left, no reserve to fall back on.  Which was probably the point, but anyway…  The smallest fear loomed large because I honestly felt one small disaster away from going stark raving mad or losing all trust in God.  And I’m not being dramatic.

Thankfully God brought just the right truths into my life at well-spaced intervals throughout the pregnancy.  Perhaps after a few months He was tired of hearing me quote the same Bible verses at Him several times a day so He decided to drop another one in my lap.  Here are the crevices where I slipped my fingers and fought for dear life:

The story of Gideon.  A Bible study I was doing brought out the point that God knew that Gideon’s faith was weak and that in order for Gideon to accomplish what God had set out for him, in order for Gideon not to lose heart, Gideon needed some help.  God gave Gideon sign after sign (the famous “fleece” being one of them) to prove that He was trustworthy.  I was so comforted by the reminder that God knew what I personally needed for my faith to withstand the circumstances He has ordained for me.  I told Him that I had no idea what I needed (I wasn’t going to name my “fleece”,) but that I just needed Him to be that compassionate, to baby me along like He did Gideon, to build up my faith again.

Psalm 103.  This has been a favorite of mine since I memorized it in 6^th grade.  A verse that I’d always glossed over began to stick in my mind about midway through my pregnancy.  “Who satisfies your years with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle.”  I felt old and haggard (don’t laugh at me).  I’ve always been told I look years younger than my actual age, but grief and two pregnancies this close to each other really did a number on my body.  When I look at pictures of myself before I fell pregnant with Arthur, it looks like the young, happy, healthy me.  Maybe no one else notices, but in the pictures from May 2014 on, I can see the grief, the exhaustion, the extra stretch marks and fat, the wispy, uncontrollable hair growing back in from postpartum hair loss.  I had spent almost all of my oldest daughter’s life pregnant.  Plus I turned 30.  I prayed this verse to God often; that He would fill whatever years I have left with good things, that I would be satisfied, satiated with His goodness, that the joy and vigor I used to have would come back to me.

Matthew 12  We teach preschool Sunday School at our church, and this year we are studying the book of Matthew.  Our family pastor encouraged all the teachers to read through the book in a week or two.  I did, and once again verses I knew before took hold of my heart: “A BATTERED REED HE WILL NOT BREAK OFF, AND A SMOLDERING WICK HE WILL NOT PUT OUT.”  These words are a prophecy from Isaiah, speaking of Christ’s gentleness.  The moment I read this verse, I gasped out loud.  That’s what I am!  I’m a battered reed and a smoldering wick.  I’m afraid something will come along and snap me in two, snuff out the last flicker of light.  Frankly, I was afraid that something from God’s hand would snap me in two or snuff me out.  But right here was a promise that He would not.  Oh, how many times I prayed and said “You said you wouldn’t!  So don’t.  Please don’t.”

Mentally, the best I can do to explain this pregnancy is something I read in a book or blog: pregnancy after a loss is like sending a soldier with PTSD back to the battlefield.  Every glance in the mirror, every kick in the ribs, every doctor visit gave me flashbacks to moments I didn’t want to relive.  I had incredibly vivid dreams that would leave me shaking and sobbing long after I woke up.  Honestly, I think I processed some of my shock and grief during this pregnancy, not while I was pregnant with Arthur.  I feel like a scab got ripped off too soon, over and over again.

Physically, it was just a hard pregnancy.  I was pretty sick at the beginning, and the nausea didn’t go away for good until almost 18 weeks.  I had scary episodes of my heart racing that left me feeling exhausted and wondering if I should go to the ER.  I weighed more than I have ever weighed in my life.  I felt drained for most of the pregnancy.  And I struggled to find the joy in all this, because being pregnant is really not that fun – we just enjoy it because we know that it means a new little life is growing and will soon join us.  Except when that little life never gets to come home.

Having my new little one home has healed some parts of me.  I’m not pregnant anymore, and physically feel SO much better.  Really, though, the healing is mostly spiritual.  God has proved to me (again…) that He keeps His promises.  He hears prayers.  He is gentle and compassionate.  He lavishes His steadfast love on His people.  I’m so glad to be in a place of spiritual rest again.  Fighting is really hard.

But some parts of me still ache.  When we walked into the labor and delivery unit and heard a baby crying in one of the rooms, both my husband and I struggled to not lose it right there in front of the nurse registering me.  When I hold my sleeping daughter, her mouth looks exactly like Arthur’s.  When I rejoice in each new experience with her – nursing, smiling, giggling, rolling over – I grieve not having had those experiences with him.  When I look at pictures of the 4 of us, I can’t help but think what it would look like to have a toddling little boy there too.  And I still will never know what to say when someone asks how many children I have. 

But I praise God, who has heard and continues to hear prayers, and who is satisfying my years with good things, like baby coos and endless games of Go Fish.