Miscarriage
“I’m sorry. I can’t find the heartbeat,” she said. I stared in shock at the ultrasound machine. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It hurt too much to think about it.
“What?” my mind screamed. “What are you saying?” But really I didn’t want to know. I stared at the screen willing the baby to live. A month before, we had seen the baby move and blood flowing to its heart. But now, there was nothing.
“Please,” my heart cried, “Please find it.” I couldn’t look at my husband’s face. The world had seemed to stop suddenly and everything in my heart waited to hear what she had to say next. But there was nothing more to see.
Finally, I remembered my husband and that he needed me too. He, too, was suffering. I glanced at him in shock and then looked back at the screen, wishing the outcome to be different.
But it was not. Just a few minutes ago, we had been talking about morning sickness, hormones, weight loss and suddenly I was talking about miscarriage and next steps. I began to cry. The technician was still probing inside and took a ton of pictures and I just wanted her to be done. I didn’t want to see anymore.
So many questions
My eyes were rather red as my husband lovingly held me as we walked down the hall to the doctor’s room again. There we talked about surgery and medicine and natural miscarriage. We decided to wait and make a decision later that day. The doctor was great. She hugged us as we left.
We walked out, only to see a little girl. I began crying again. My husband took me to the car and we cried and hugged each other. It hurt so badly that I didn’t know what to do.
We had told everyone we knew that we were expecting. They all knew days after the baby had already died in my womb. I felt so silly. What a mess to undo. My head was in shock and I didn’t know where to go.
But I asked God, “Why? Why didn’t we know sooner? Why did it happen? Was it our fault? Did we do it? Were we ever going to have kids? Could we go back to the office and have a second look? What if they were wrong? Why didn’t you let the baby live? Why did you take him?” These questions kept running through my head over and over and over again.
We thought the baby was a boy. We had names picked out and everything. We were planning and saving, hoping and dreaming. What kind of God would do that? “Who are You, God,” my heart cried.
Working through my grief
A year and a half later, it still hurts. It’s still a painful memory, although time has softened the blow. But I feel like I’m betraying the lives of my children to even say that. It hurts a great deal. I’m still angry at times. It has been a long process to even get this far – a long and intense process.
I’ve heard the sympathy and lack of sympathy from many. I’ve been part of an incredible friendship that has encouraged, uplifted and challenged me as we walked the road of losing a child together. But mostly, I’ve cried out to God.
I’ve yelled at God, telling Him everything that He has done stinks. I’ve hated Him. I didn’t even want to speak to Him ever again, but after realizing that it was impossible to do that I repented and turned from that sin.
I remember not wanting to ever see people again, at the same time I wanted them to surround me. I never wanted to attend church again, so that I wouldn’t have to answer any questions. But I did and I’m glad I did because I’ve had the arms of many believers around me.
But the internal struggles continued. It wasn’t supposed to happen to me, to us. We were solid, growing, maturing believers. We loved God enough to give our lives to whatever ministry He wanted us to be in. We did what was right.
Moving forward
As the due date approached for our little one, I struggled even harder. Up until that point, I was so busy with everything that I didn’t spend a tremendous amount of time working on the grief process. The hardest point for me when the baby would have been born was that I was without a job, something I would not have needed had the baby lived. I was going to be a mom and my status in life would have been secure in that. Instead, here I was, a jobless woman. So I mourned that loss.
I remember feeling so helpless and uncertain of why I even existed. God seemed so unfair and so far away, so uncaring in my mind. Everything seemed so pointless. And as I mourned, crying out to God with my pain, He comforted me with Himself.
He showed me that it was okay to cry, to tell Him of all that hurt, and then He comforted me. He showed me through His word, through His Spirit, through the love of my husband, and the love of His people that He loved me. He didn’t do this to punish me. My sins were canceled at the cross of Christ. Instead of having a child on September 28, the due date, I was hired for a job that I had been training for since the month after the miscarriage. He loved me, a fact that I understand a great deal more now because of this pain.
Back to the beginning
Life progressed and God brought a new challenge into our lives in the form of foster parenting and possibly adoption. We started two and a half months of classes in February of that next year, only to find out a month later that we were pregnant again.
Oh, the joy that I experienced. I was elated! “God doesn’t hate me,” I thought. I am blessed! We kept it quiet for about a week as the hormone levels were confirmed to be rising and then told our families, and then gradually, our friends. I felt complete. I had given my in-laws and my mom a grandchild. I wasn’t a failure in life any longer. I had a purpose and it was to be a mom.
That was March. In April, I experienced a loss in hormones and had a funny feeling that it was happening again. Suddenly, my world spun. I became cold to all of it, especially God. I was shocked that He would allow it to happen again. For three weeks, we went to a weekly ultrasound as we watched and waited.
The night before our seventh week ultrasound, I had realized that I hadn’t prayed for this little one. I knew why. I knew that God was in control and if He was going to allow this baby to live, then He would. And if not, then He wouldn’t. My prayers wouldn’t change His will. But I also knew that He wanted me to tell Him what was on my heart, so I decided to pray and tell God that I wanted this one to live. I wanted to hold this baby in my arms and be their mom.
I wish there was another way
But the next day, we saw nothing on the ultrasound machine, having seen the heartbeat only the week before. I cried, but at the same time, something in me had died. I was angry at God, in a way that I couldn’t even explain.
We didn’t schedule a surgery that week, as the doctor wanted to give the baby another week to prove without a doubt that he or she hadn’t just turned out of view. So we told our families, crying with them and waited, hoping. But the baby was gone. We had an amazingly clear picture of her or his development, but no heart was beating.
I miss this child too. I hate that it’s a past tense. I wish there was another way. I don’t know if it will ever really go away although there are days that it’s not as intense as others. Maybe it will continue to lessen if God ever will give us a child. Maybe not. Maybe I will one day hold those kids in heaven.
He has the words of life
I know God is sovereign and good and just and merciful and full of compassion, because He said so. He told me that in His Word. If it isn’t true here and now, in this crisis, then what use is my faith?
I’m reminded of the question Christ asked His disciples when many decided to forsake Him because of the pressures of the religious leaders of His day. “Do you wish to leave me also?” He asked. And their response? “To whom shall we go? You have the words of life.”
There is no other rock nor hiding Place. He alone is God. Therefore, if He cannot comfort me, then there is none who can help. So I wait for the God of all comfort and in the meantime, I cry to Him of my pain.
Read a story of miscarriage, hope, and God’s provision in a woman’s personal story in “An Unreasonable Joy“.
Congrats!! That’s so exciting!! Praising God with you on the miracle that He has given you! :)
JEG/Joy, what wonderful news! Thank you for coming back to our site to share your story and God’s gift in your life. May you have a blessed life with your son!
Hi again, I am the first person that posted a comment back last Nov. I am so happy to report, I am holding my son that I was 8 wks pregnant with back then.(after 3 m/c and 1 0yrs from first trying to start a family) We named him Josiah, one of the meanings is Jehovah has healed, which is why we gave him that name.
I am not going to lie, it was hard mentally all the way till the day I delivered. God gave me this verse about half way through..
Forget about what has happened before, do not think about the past, instead look at the new thing I am going to do. Isaiah 43:18-19
and a new thing He indeed did do!
To all the women that have experience m/c and still waiting for your miracle, please keep trusting God. He has a plan and He often works on a different time table then us.
<3
Hi, Lisa ~
You should write your story! I would like to be able to read it. The pain is sometimes so intense though that it feels as if it will literally break my heart, when I wrote it. I remember that pain very vividly. But at some level it is a relief to get all of those feelings out onto paper. But very painful. And there is hope. There is. If there wasn’t, then all of the talk of God would be pointless. There is hope because there is God. The God of heaven who cares for us even in the midst of this sin-cursed world that affects all of us, and for us as women it affects our bodies. I hate it. I wish it was not so. But it is. I’m sorry. Praying that God will give you continual strength as you go through this journey. Ours has reached some resolution as we have been given a beautiful baby girl. :) But that doesn’t mean that we are through all of the struggle. There could be more issues in the future, but we don’t know. God is still God and He is still in control. in Him ~ Linnea
Wow, thank you so much for sharing your story. I had a miscarriage, too, and it’s so nice to have a Christian woman’s perspective. I read a lot about miscarriages after it happened, and so many people say “well, it was just meant to be.” Or, “it was God’s will.” But I don’t believe that it was or ever is God’s will for anyone to have to die, including babies. Before sin happened, death was not part of the plan. I strongly believe, though, that God knows what will happen to each of us and that His plan is far better than our own plans. If we follow him and trust Him with our lives, we will be richly blessed. But we will also have pain and hardship, and that’s the beauty of faith. We choose to love and trust God even when we don’t like what’s happening to us.
Hi Linnea,
If i were to write my story it would look so simular to yours. So much so! Tears came down my face at such a rate I couldnt see through them to read and had to take a break and come back. THANK YOU so much for sharing and for giving me some hope today as I struggle to finsh my story. I stopped writting after my surgery to unblock my fallopian tubes in Dec. 2009 and wanted to complete it after I was holding my mirical baby, (that hasnt happened and instead I learned that I actually only have one “working” tube.) My husband and I have been trying for 8 years and suffered one lost in 2004.
My desire of a mirical story is just that, my desire. God may have a story of STRENGHT and Endurance for me that I’ve been running from! You have written in your pain and that encourges me in a huge way! I praise our Father for you and how you allowed Him to use you to write this story. WOW.
So on your Dec. post you stated that God had allowed you to become pregnant again, are you still there?
Dear Frances,
Thanks for responding again and sharing where you are at with the whole subject of infertility and children. :) I read through the verse you were mentioning (Ps.113:9) and agree that it definetly could be seen as stating that God will give the barren woman children. And I agree that God does give us what we ask for and we do need to have faith that He can and will do it, if it is in His will. God does and has given many barren women children, but He also has with held them from many as well. But I hope and pray that someday in the near future that does become a reality for you as you seem to desire them greatly! :)
And I will also pray that as you wait patiently for this gift from God that you continue to desire God above all else. That’s the hardest part of this whole journey, to worship and desire God and to be content in the middle of not knowing whether or not we are to be blessed with kids. Let me know how things go as I would love to know!
I am writing to correct my statement written on the 30th of March, 2010 that I was waiting for God to bless us with children and it has come to my knowledge through the word of God in Psalms 113:9 (Goodnews bible) that God has honored me and given me children. If He has given me, then its up to me to either recieve it or reject it. Therefore I boldly confess in accordance with Mark 11:24 that because I have asked for children, I believe that I have recieved children and I thank God that I am pregnant NOW with children. I said Now because I realized from Jesus ministry on earth that He never told anyone who came to Him for healing or deliverance that they should wait for God’s time but they were healed immediately they exercise their faith in God, the day we reach out to God in faith depends on us and not God. For God has already given us all things(whatever we may need) in Christ Jesus, no wonder psalm 16:6 said that we have a good inheritance. All we have to do is walk by faith in love, for faith works by love and our confessions MUST be in line with our faith. Satan has been decieving us for so long, no more of it devil! We know who we are, what we have and what we can do. Thank you Father for opening my eyes to see this. Praise God! Alleluya!!!
Dear Lin,
The questions never go away. :) Sadly. I think in fact that it is merely the focus that changes. I still don’t know why God allowed us to have two miscarriages. I wish I did. I grieve to this day, three years later, for the first child and two years for the second. and I remember vividly the days when I wondered often whether or not God would ever put a child to keep into our arms. It becomes a new normal, something that I never wanted but something that God has allowed into my life. And as you say, we don’t know the results, but hopefully we learn to embrace whatever He has for us. Because the bitterness, resentment, anger, frustration, fears, etc…that can quickly overwhelm us are just that overwhelming. They don’t do any good in the long run and they make us miserable and in fact can do the same to everyone around us. Its hard work, this particular part of life.
Thankfully we don’t have to go it alone. God has promised to never leave us nor forsake us and for that I am grateful.
Dear Frances,
Thanks for commenting! Yes, it is a long hard road, waiting for the blessing of God. Something that I’ve learned over and over again is that God is in charge of the timing. No matter how many times or things that we tried, until He wanted it to happen, nothing happened. Its so frustrating as a human, as we want to be in charge and in control, but although God does allow us to have involvement in the process, the results are really all up to Him. Praying for you as you wait.
I came across this site why looking for a christain that has gone through
what am going through but your case is more and i draw strength from it.
Am 7 months married to my husband and we have been trying to concieve but
has been unsuccessful even with the ovulation dates and prayers. Everyone around us are getting pregnant except us.i want to be a mom, i want to hold our baby and we are going to keep on trying till God blesses us.
I came across this article looking for some perspective, having jus had a 2nd m/c as well. so many questions :)
I can relate to how you felt, as we had told quite a few people abt the pregnancy too! I also feel a pang when peers tell me they are expecting, even if I am happy for them.
Well, I don’t know what is God’s end plan for us, but I hope I can learn to embrace whatever He has in store!
God bless!
Thanks for responding! :)
I am also in the midst of waiting for the outcome of a pregnancy as God has allowed me once again to carry. The fears that accompany this child’s birth are overwhelming to say the least. But I am reminded that God is still God and in the end, He will be the one I worship and will never disappoint, not this child, as wonderful as I hope the relationship will be. I hope you have a Merry Christmas!
Psalms 113:9 He settles the barren woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.
Praise the LORD.
Thank you for sharing your story. I have had 3 m/c myself and I am now 8 wks pg. I don’t know whats going to happen. I can only trust that God loves me no matter what. I realize that as God gave me this great gift it also brings me to my most vulnerable place as well. I have to keep my eyes on Him.