I have been in the Outer Banks for the last few days spending some time with the family on the beach. I haven’t had a chance to post my most recent Catholic Exchange article so here it is:
I am writing this article because I know that I am not alone. I know that even in the midst of my deep grief and agony, there are others like me. I have just lost my fourth child to miscarriage. I don’t have profound spiritual insight to offer right now. Even though I am a student theologian, I won’t be offering theological explanations today. That will come later when the pain is less acute. For now, the pain, sorrow, and intense suffering must run its course. I want to explain the agony of miscarriage. First, this is to minister to those who suffer with me, and second, it is to explain that a miscarriage is the loss of a child; something that needs to be explained to a culture that has dehumanized unborn babies.
We live in a culture that tells me I did not lose a child. We are told that my husband and I lost a blob of tissue and that is all. A mother knows better. A mother knows that she was united to that child from the moment of conception and a mother knows the intense and immediate love she has for the child from the very beginning. A mother (and a father) knows the wonder and joy of the tiny heartbeat of her baby flickering on the ultrasound screen. The very same beating heart that can be seen by some ultrasound technology at 5.5 weeks pregnant. This may be inconvenient for the culture of death, but it is reality all the same. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and wondered at the beauty of my child on the screen.
This miscarriage seemed crueler in some ways than my others. My third was the most traumatic in that I hemorrhaged and needed emergency surgery. This one my husband and I were given the joy of seeing the heartbeat, a strong heartbeat, on the ultrasound screen. We saw it not once, but twice. There was our child with his heartbeat growing stronger two weeks in a row. Then the spotting started. I tried to reason it away. I read forums and talked to friends who told me that spotting can be normal in the first trimester. Then the spotting gave way to streaks of bright red blood and I knew deep down what was going on.
My husband and I rushed to the ER, as my OB/GYN’s office instructed us. The ER staff got me right back. They began their work drawing blood and ordering tests. I knew the drill. I had been there before many times. Then the ultrasound tech came to take me back for an ultrasound to check the baby’s heartbeat. When you’ve been through enough of these you can see it on the staff’s face and in their mannerisms when something is wrong. When an ultrasound tech does not talk to you during the test it means the baby has died.
Swimming the Depths 