In the Midst of Losing the Baby

A sunrise from our backyard earlier this month.

We found out on Holy Thursday that our new little baby may have stopped growing. The ultrasound dates were slightly off from my charting, the baby measuring at 6 weeks when I should have been 7 weeks along. Good Friday brought us the news that my HCG levels were too low for the baby to still be growing. We had lost the baby. We were hoping to share our hopeful news with the world after Easter, but instead it is news of our loss.

I woke up several times Friday night, and all I could think about was the lack of life inside me. When I am pregnant I always think about myself in relation to the growing baby, and my way of thinking had to change. I had to stop thinking of Advent as the time of a new baby. I had been so looking forward to another Advent baby, preparing for Christmas early, and sitting back and loving my baby while the world rushed around us preparing for Christmas. But now at the end of Lent, we knew that Advent was not going to be about our new baby. Our new baby was passing on without us.

Saturday we immersed ourselves in Easter preparations, went to the Vigil Mass, and then Easter Sunday we spent with some family in Wisconsin. It was easy to not think too much about it. Though L (3) told me several times that she wished that we still had a new baby coming.

Monday morning I went back to the doctor for G's (5) well visit and a blood draw for me. Another HCG level would confirm things for sure. As we went out to the car I saw a friend walking in who told me her news of just finding out she was expecting. I congratulated her, outwardly cheerful, but inside my heart ached. M had the day off on Monday, as he had had on Friday, and I was so thankful to be able to be close to each other during our immediate experience of loss. Though we have always been that way; every hardship since we have been together, we have experienced as a couple. It is only normal for us to be drawn together now.

Tuesday morning, I woke up sad again. I knew that today would bring the final news. I saw a picture of my sister's sweet baby boy on Facebook, and I lost it. Her little boy is so cute, and I realized that I was also hoping for a little boy. (Though am pretty sure we are will only have girls.) I wondered all day if things would start passing soon. I moped about the house, relaxed with the kids, and could not find it in myself to take on house work. We managed about ten minutes of preschool activities, but that was about it. M came home mid-afternoon, and I took time to run. He then did yard work with the kids and I showered and we still waited for the final phone call. It came, and my HCG levels still showed no more living, growing baby. But also that things are not going to start to pass for a couple of weeks. I did not think I could bear it, waiting two weeks before things are resolved.

My sorrow is not worry about the fate of the baby, for I have entrusted the baby to the mercy of God, but it is the loss that hurts. It is M's loss and the children's loss. G and L know what has happened, they know that they will not know this baby, grow up with this baby. F (17 months) is happy not to know, and is a consolation in her cheerfulness and babyish ways. I have found night nursing times with her to be so sweet lately as I mourn our lost baby. And now I think I am going to make it two more weeks with this little baby inside me. It is my last chance to physically be with this child, even though the baby's soul has passed on.

Please pray for us, that we find healing. Please pray for me, that the baby passes safely for me, and I know the chances are slim that we will find our smaller than 1 cm baby as he or she comes out, pray for that to. Thank you for your prayers.