Miscarriage comes with deep anguish and grief. I know, because I have just suffered my fourth. Those of us who have experienced a miscarriage, or recurrent miscarriage, largely grieve in the shadows or behind closed doors. We live in a culture that tells us we have not lost a child, but a blob of tissue.
The inconvenient fact is that a mother knows better. We can cover it up. We can veil the truth in secrecy, but ask any mother or father who has lost a child to miscarriage, and they will tell you they lost a child.
On our wedding day we cannot foresee the profound suffering any of us will experience in our married lives. It doesn’t occur to most men and women that they may lose a child, or many children. There is little talk of infertility, hormone issues, or genetic incompatibilities. When a family decides to begin having children, few immediately anticipate that any children conceived could die.
My first miscarriage happened four months after I married. My husband and I went in for our first ultrasound to check our child’s heartbeat. There was a heartbeat, a strong one, but next to our daughter was another sac where her twin had died.
Vanishing Twin Syndrome, or the early miscarriage of a twin, is rather common. Our doctor informed us that transvaginal ultrasounds detect the loss of a twin in early pregnancy with greater frequency now. I was stunned. My great joy became intermingled with sorrow.
Swimming the Depths 