At the start of 2015 we decided with trepidation to try for our third child. I say “trepidation” not because we doubted the outcome but because we were so confident of it. Our attempts to conceive with our other children had been successful almost immediately, and I was sure that in no time we’d be pregnant with three in nappies.
The happy news of successful conception came in March. Everything was going according to plan. The baby was due on January 1. Mental planning began: I’d finish work in December, visitors at Christmas would need to be shifted…
The next day I started bleeding and went for an immediate scan. I lay on the table, clutching my stomach, staring at the ceiling. The seemingly emotionally deficient sonographer said nothing. The only noise was the click of the keyboard and beeping as she took measurements. Eventually she turned the screen my way. It was blank.
“I see no evidence of a yolk or a sac. The pregnancy, if there was one, has already passed away. Here are some tissues. Give this consent form to the desk on your way out.”
I went back to the GP. He, too, was pretty perfunctory. He talked me though the next couple of days, what to look out for, what to be worried by and then it was over. I had walked into the GP that morning pregnant and I was exiting empty.
We clung to each other when I got home. I had already cried so much that I held on to my husband as he cried. That was four days before my 36th birthday. I didn’t tell my family at the time. I couldn’t imagine the “happy birthday” phone calls tinged with an awkward sadness.
This sadness went on for days. I found myself staring out the window with an expressionless face. People asked if I was OK. Of course I wasn’t, but who wants to explain that and break down each time? “I’m not too bad, thanks; how are you?” Redirect and get on to them. Normally people love talking about themselves so that worked a treat except for those sensitive souls who actually wanted to know how I was.
I read blogs and forums of other women who had experienced miscarriage. There was a catharsis in crying over my and other’s grief combined. I remember thinking at the time that God had spared me in that my miscarriage was so early on. I read stories of women who miscarried much later and their pain seemed so much worse. I read about women who had the horror of recognising the foetus as they expelled life from their body. God was kind to spare me that pain.
As that week and the following weeks went by, it became a little easier. I found myself avoiding pregnant women a little less. I even engaged in asking questions about their pregnancy, how they were sleeping, sore backs etc. At playgroup and in the church crèche, the huddles of bumps continued, blissfully unaware of the grief that lurked at the edge of their circles.
“You’ll go again for another one, won’t you guys?”
“Yeah, God-willing.”
“Would you like to have a third?”
“God-willing,” delivered tightlipped.
In July I found myself pregnant again. We were a little more nervous this time. I was tired. I craved salt and vinegar chips. Each time I recognised one or the other I was happy. Queasiness was good. Tiredness was good. It meant I was still pregnant.
When I got the scan done, I saw a lovely blob with a fast beating heart. It all looked good. What I thought was an 8 week foetus was only 7 weeks according to measurements. We were given a due date in March and starting making plans.
A week later I went to our church playgroup. I’d been finding it much easier since being pregnant again. The huddle of bumps comparing and talking about their pregnancies was bothering me less and less as I considered my lovely internal secret. As they talked about plans for the start of labour and previous delivery scares, I joined in.
At the end of playgroup that day I felt bleeding. Panic. My husband collected me and held me as I wailed “Oh God, not again.” Back to the GP. Try to stay positive, it’s not necessarily the worst case scenario.
The wait for the scan was excruciating and finally my name was called. She came into the waiting room. The same emotionally deficient woman who had done the scan in April. Great.
I shook as I lay on the table. Please God let there be a heart beat. Please. She took measurements. Clicking on the keyboard, beeping to save them. Maybe that’s good, I thought. I stared at the ceiling, willing her to say she could see the telltale flicker of a heartbeat. Then she turned the screen to me.
That lovely blob, still there. Looking exactly the same as just over a week before. But this time there was no flicker. Just an empty form in a soon to be empty sac. I wondered if I would see it slip away before my eyes, carried along with an imploding placenta.
Back home, sitting on the couch with my husband felt so familiar. Holding each other as we cried together, again. Same blank staring into space. Same wordless prayers. Same random triggers bringing fresh tears.
I found myself thinking a lot about Ecclesiastes in the following days. I thought about the word hevel repeated throughout; this enigmatic word that captures the sense of mist/vapour/transience/futility/vanity. James picks up on Ecclesiastes when he writes:
| “Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:14-15 |
When life itself is so misty, a vapour that comes and goes, one response is to be scared of the Creator who gives and takes away. I would be lying if I said that 2015 never saw me scared of God or doubting his goodness. Praying “your will be done” is edgy and I confess that there were instances where I couldn’t voice these words. In these moments, I reminded myself that he is good, he is strong and he loves me. It is simple and true and I still need to hear it. Often.
But there’s another response that can come after fear. The misty nature of life leads in an odd way to thankfulness. When life is ungraspable, here one day and gone the next, we can choose to focus on the gift while it is there. And so I don’t think I have hugged my children so much, or told them so often that they are a gift, as I have in the months following our miscarriages.
God has been kind, and we are pregnant again. Thinking through the paradigm of “gift” means we are hopefully less presumptuous. We are less quick to make plans. This third child is not our due but a gift from God, and we understand that now in a way that I suspect we didn’t before.
Now we say “God-willing” and we actually mean it. That little phrase can be tacked on so flippantly, but it is a strong thing when you really acknowledge what it means to say it. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, we are misty creatures who appear for a little while and vanish. And so we hold our plans lightly and pray for the faith to know in a very deep way that God is good, he is strong and he loves us.
Image: Sarah Hopkins (flickr)
