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Amazed and Thankful

 

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I know that I am doing something right in moments like the one I experienced this afternoon.  My two year old daughter came up to me and handed me a cross shaped piece of pumpkin vine.  She pointed to it and said, “Jesus”.  My heart melted and I was so proud.  These are moments that strengthen me in my vocation.  It is easy as a parent to look out at the Fallen world and feel like it is impossible to keep our children committed to Christ.  I think that Our Lord reminds me through my daughter that I must persevere and by His grace she will walk the path of holiness to Sainthood and the Beatific Vision.  What a blessing my daughter is and I am so thankful that God chose to give her to me, as unworthy as I am.  Happy Saturday!

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Dealing with Miscarriage Part III: It’s a Journey

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When I started writing this series on miscarriage, I did not know where it would go.  I just started typing.  I let my heart do the talking and my fingers do the telling.  A friend said to me that writing it down may be a form of healing for me, and I think that she is right.  It has been a really stressful year for my family.  We are at a point where we expect an emergency or tragedy every month.  It has made it difficult for me to really grieve and heal from my most recent loss.  Perhaps taking the time to share my experiences with others is helping.  I do not write as someone who has all of the answers.  Like most people, I am struggling through the questions, the doubts, and the pain.  I have moments of clarity followed by moments of despair.  This life is a journey, grief is a journey.  Being purified in the furnace of suffering is deeply difficult, even if it makes me or anyone else a much deeper person and unites us more fully to Christ.

 
I am learning that it is ok to say it hurts.  I can cry, even in public.  Sometimes wounds open and pour crimson all over the place.  Pain is not neat and tidy.  Grief does not call you up and say when it will hit.  Sometimes you find yourself sobbing uncontrollably in a public restroom, like I did last night.  Something triggers the pain.  The wounds that are still tender tear open and you bleed internally.  It hurts and all you can do is wait for the bleeding to stop and it does.  If you are reading this and have been through a miscarriage or any other grief, I want you to know that it is ok to fall apart.  You can’t be strong all of the time, I know I can’t.  There will be times when the pain gets to be too much and all you can do is let water flow and glisten your cheeks until it is done.  Death is agonizing.  It separates us from who we were meant to be.  It took Our God coming down as man to sever the despair and finality of death.  The distance between our dead loved ones and ourselves feels great, perhaps that is a side effect of sin.  Believing that my babies are in Heaven gives me eventual peace, but it does not alleviate the aching in my heart or the longing in my arms.
 
I was at a crisis pregnancy center dinner last night when my heart broke again.  I was sitting in a banquet room with 590 people.  I was enjoying a nice dinner and talented musicians.  I was with friends and we were talking and laughing.  But, deep down, I knew the pain was lingering beneath the surface.  You cannot write what I have written this week and expect it not to impact you.  They began showing a beautiful short film called Crescendo.  It was heart wrenching in its desperation, a desperation that so many women feel when they choose abortion over life.  She ends up having her child and as she labored, I thought of my own daughter.  Then woman in the film held her new child and the pain boiled over within me, and tears poured down my face.  I thought of a baby that I should be laboring and holding now.  My Marie.  I walked out of the room.  Many probably thought that I had had an abortion and could not handle it.  The thought crossed my mind as I left the room.  But, the pain of losing a child no matter the circumstances is painful and in that room of people working to heal the broken, it would not matter either way.  Pride.
 
I made it to the bathroom where I sobbed against a wall.  Thankfully, my friend Christine had followed me and I cried on her shoulder.  The weight was too great.  I finally uttered the words that I struggled to admit.  I miss my babies.  I miss my babies….I never get to hold them, or kiss them, or snuggle with them.  I do not get to hear their first word, or watch them take their first steps.  They feel lightyears away and that distance cuts me to the core.  I know that they are with Our Lord.  I trust in that even if Revelation does not explicitly mention it.  (I will talk about the Church on Monday).  It just hurts.  It confuses and confounds me. It leaves me vulnerable and shaken to my very being.
 
I guess I started sharing all of this because I don’t want other women and families to feel alone.  I do not want you to feel like you can’t grieve or that your pain is not warranted.  This blog is about the path to holiness and this is where I am on the journey.  I have plenty of moments of joy in my day. My daughter amazes me constantly.  I will write about these things too.  There is so much goodness in my life.  I just am in a period of grief at the same time.  Tears are healing.  And that is a part of life.  We go through years of grief in this life.  It waxes and wanes.  
 
I pray you have a very blessed weekend.  Enjoy your family! Be extra thankful at Mass or Church on Sunday.  Take a look at the beauty around you.  Beauty heals.  He heals.  Be patient with yourself.
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Miscarriage Series Continues Tomorrow

Thank you for all who have read the series on miscarriage, so far.  I hope that it is helping you to see that you are not alone.  I have received a couple of emails from women who have shared their stories with me.  I am deeply humbled and appreciative of those emails.  Tomorrow I will continue on with a post about miscarriage and the Catholic Church.  Today is a busy day and I want to be able to give my full attention to my next post.  I will talk about my own experiences in the Church, what she teaches, and some things that we can do when touched by miscarriage.  Have a blessed day!

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Dealing with Miscarriage Part II: Grief

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Blessed are they who mourn; for they will be comforted. Matthew 5:5

Grief is one of the most difficult aspects of life.  We are guaranteed that it will come our way.  Most of the time it blindsides us.  Grief in miscarriage can be lonely, deeply painful, infuriating, and cathartic all in the same day.  The grief sets in when we are told that our child is dead or it may set in once the bleeding starts or stops, or it may take years for the grief to overtake us.  Miscarriage is something that our society, and I hate to say it, the Church largely ignores.  This is probably for a number of reasons.  I would say some of it has to do with the abortion culture, some of it is privacy, and a lot of it is fear.  Fear on the part of the family who has lost a child.  They are afraid to share their pain and experiences with others, even their own priest, or their own spouse.  This can also be mixed with embarrassment thanks to a culture that does not acknowledge the brief motherhood and parenthood of the family involved in the loss.

 
My own experiences with grief in my miscarriages have varied widely with each loss.  My ability to deal with my grief has been affected by my own health or mental well being at times.  I too have fallen prey to being embarrassed to talk about it, usually after someone has unknowingly said something insensitive to me.  My first miscarriage was the hardest to share with people.  When I found out about losing Michaela’s twin I was in shock.  It was not real or tangible for me.  I did not actually see my body lose the life.  I told family and friends about it, and they brushed it off.  While I know they did not mean to hurt me, they did.  By telling me to focus on my daughter who was alive, they essentially told me that I did not have a right to grieve.  That may not have been what they meant, but that is how I took it.  I am here to tell you that you have a right to grieve the loss of your child or children.  Take as long as you need.
 
I was violently ill through most of my first and only full-term pregnancy.  I could not leave the house for the first month of “morning sickness”.  I was too sick to focus on much grief.  I was just trying to survive.  I finally got to a point when I could return to the Women’s Bible Study at the home of a friend of mine that I attended.  She promised to clean the bathroom, which I had to use regularly to throw up what little I had eaten or drank.  It was there that I opened up a little bit about what happened, and it was then that I learned that there are a lot of women who have lost children in miscarriage, but have remained silent about it.  Why?  They have been hurt by others, they felt alone, even in the Church, or the grief was too much to bare.
 
I finally found a couple of women who had been through it.  Not only had they been through it, but they had had multiple miscarriages.  I did not know it at the time, but I would be one of those women too.  My friend who led the Bible Study asked me to go to Franciscan University with her on a youth minister’s retreat.  I decided to go, but was hesitant because of how sick I was with the pregnancy.  By the grace of God, I did not get sick the entire retreat.  My morning sickness returned when I got home.  It was during that retreat that some sense of healing began.  During what Franciscan calls the Festival of Praise, I had a prayerful vision of Our Lord holding a baby wrapped in a pink blanket.  I was only 3 months pregnant at the time, so I did not know that I was having a girl.  It was then that I knew that Michaela would be a girl and that we had lost her identical twin.  I cried.  I cried healing tears.  I cried as I felt my heart being ripped from my chest.  I cried until peace enveloped me.  Afterwards, I shared the experience with my friend.  She said she had had a similar experience with one of her losses and she knew immediately what had happened to me.  It was then that healing began.  I was finally free to grieve.
 
Throughout all of this I did not talk much to my husband about it.  He is much better at accepting God’s will than I am.  So while he was sad, he chose to focus on Michaela and taking care of me during the pregnancy.  As a mother, I needed a chance to let go of the child I would never hold.  When Michaela was born I was overjoyed.  I did often think of her twin, though.  I would see twins and cry.  I would see twins and wonder.  My husband admitted to me that at times he thought about it too.  I still think about it every  now and then and my daughter is 2 years old.  I will see identical twin girls and look at my daughter and wonder what her twin is like and how it would have been to be the mother of twins.  That wound is still with me.  Time has just made the pain less acute. And I try to trust that she is with Our Lord.
 
My second miscarriage in March of 2012 was more difficult.  I was devastated.  I had really felt like we were having a boy.  I was excited, pouring over boy’s names.  Picking out saint names that my husband would never go with i.e. Augustine, Xavier.  I felt pretty good during the pregnancy.  I was motivated and glowed.  I only threw up a couple of times.  I thought maybe this one will be different.  It was different, but  not in the way I thought.  I lost Caleb Augustine at about 7 weeks.  The most painful part for me was having to flush my child down the toilet.  It ripped me into pieces.  My heart broke in such deep ways that I felt like I would  never recover.  I felt alone.  My husband is always so strong in these situations when there was a part of me that needed to see him fall apart.  I needed to see that he felt as devastated as me.  Instead, he later told me that he wept in private to stay strong for me.  I didn’t want him to suffer like me, but I needed to see that I was not alone.  I still haven’t seen him grieve in front of me after three losses.  I have had to accept that he grieves differently from me.
 
Grief varies from person to person.  Experts tell us that grief has five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  Quite honestly, I only remember being angry, depressed, and working on acceptance.  I am not sure how you bargain with the loss of a child.  I think there are parts of me that denied it in an attempt to move forward.  With my second miscarriage I spent quite a few months in depression mode.  I would cry at random times. I would hurt when I saw other babies.  I was afraid to try again.  I guess one day I woke up and was able to hope in another child.  It was a process.  I also organized a Mass in  November of 2012 for all families who have lost a child, no matter the circumstance or age.  It was closure for families who have experienced miscarriage.  I think that it gave me some closure since we have not been able to have funerals for any of our lost children.
 
I got to a point where I desperately wanted to get pregnant again.  It took a couple of months to get the double pink line.  I was so excited.  I took a picture of the test to share and I drew a picture for Michaela to give to Phil announcing her coming sisterhood.  I was so happy.  Then the pregnancy symptoms hit and I was the most miserable I have ever been.  I spent hours on the couch.  I struggled to function both mentally and physically.  I spent days vomiting followed by days of debilitating depression and anxiety.  I was on a roller coaster that I had not bought a ticket for.  I did not understand what was wrong.  I wondered if I was actually pregnant with twins this time.  Then my first ultrasound came and I got the news I was not expecting.  There was a gestational sac but no fetal pole, that meant no baby.  The doctor tried to reassure me that I might be off on my dates, but any good Catholic woman who pays attention to her cycle knows better.  My husband tried to reassure me, but deep down I knew the baby had died.  I started lightly bleeding a few days later.  Then a second ultrasound confirmed that the baby had died just days after conception in what is termed a blighted ovum.  The problem was that my body thought I was 8 weeks pregnant.  My HCG was at 9000.
 
I went through an agonizing week of waiting.  I stayed home because I was not sure when it would hit.  I truly felt like I was in my own personal Agony in the Garden.  I was waiting to lose my child.  I was waiting to physically suffer.  I was waiting…When the miscarriage went wrong and I was laying on an operating table about to go under, all I could do was pray.  I barely remember it. I was so doped up on morphine and then the lights went out for the surgery.  I remember being cruciform and bleeding out.  I vaguely thought about how Christ bled out for so many who would deny Him.  He bled out for nothing.  My heart ached.  I felt like I had gone through Hell for nothing.  I bled for a baby long dead.  I hemorrhaged for a child I would never hold, hear, or see on this side of eternity.  I immediately fell into anger.
 
I was angry at God.  How could He make me hurt this much?  Why had he taken 3 children from me?  Why the depression and anxiety?  Why the trauma of emergency surgery? Why? Why? Why?  Two days after the surgery I stumbled, literally, into Confession with our then new priest, Fr. Mike.  I sat in front of him and poured out my heart.  I cried.  I told him how angry I was, how hurt I was.  He stayed and talked with me for a while.  He told me that my anger was natural and that it was good for me to share it with God, just not to stay in that anger too long.  He reminded me of how we all have to be purified in the fire of suffering.  I left Confession feeling a bit better, but the anger stayed with me.
 
I then went through and still am struggling with a period of intense fear.  I feared for my life.  I feared for my family.  But, most of the fear has centered around me dying.  I have thought that I have had so many life-threatening conditions over the last few months.  I am 32 with a family that has a history of long life.  The chances are slim that I am dying and yet it became an obsession.  I will look at my daughter and cry, sure that I am leaving her.  My husband finally explained to me what is going on.  He said that I have not dealt with this miscarriage fully and that because I have lost three children, I am convinced that something must be seriously wrong with me.  I think that he is absolutely right.  I recently read a quote from CS Lewis in which he talks about the death of his wife Joy Gresham, “Grief is a lot like fear.”  This quote has been so true for me this time around.  I have been confronted with my own mortality in a tangible way, but I have also lost three children, it has been compounded with a recent sudden loss of a dear friend from my Navy days.  I have been in a state of grief for three years.  I have lost a baby a year for three straight years.
 
There are days that I am petrified by anxiety and days that I can not cauterize the wounds pouring from my heart.  I pray. I look for answers.  I get angry.  I struggle to trust Our Lord’s plan.  It is a circle that I keep going in.  I find peace and then the wound re-opens.  I find peace and then I fear the worst.  My arms ache for the children that I do not get to hold.  There are holes in my heart that will never be filled for the rest of my life.  I see new babies and think of my own.  I would have been due with Marie Therese, our most recent loss, about now.  I miss her and her siblings.  I miss them terribly.
 
That’s the thing with miscarriage.  There are so many anniversary dates in the beginning.  First, there is the day or days the loss takes place.  Then, there is your due date, and then before you know it, it has been a year.  Even though I do not desire to envy anyone, there are times when I see friends’ babies at church and I am jealous.  They are cuddling their new baby while I am being torn apart.  And this has nothing to do with not being thankful for my daughter.  She is the most amazing person and I love her more than I ever knew I was capable of loving.  There is a connection between a mother and their child that is so strong that when it snaps, even at seven or eight weeks of life, it leaves a lasting imprint.
 
I am still grieving the loss of Marie.  It has been seven months, but I still feel the pain acutely.  The grief with this loss is compounded with the trauma of the loss itself.  I am afraid to get pregnant again.  I don’t know if my heart or body can take it again.  More than anything it is my heart.  How many times must I feel the joy of pregnancy only to be devastated by another loss?  This is what I keep asking God.  How do I trust?  My biggest struggle.  I know with every fiber of my being that Jesus Christ is present body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Most Holy Eucharist, but I am scared.  I fear what he will do with me?  I told my Confessor this and he told me this is a rational fear, but that I must learn to trust that He will do what is best for me and that is to make me a saint.  I guess it is only now that I am learning just how hard to path to holiness i.e. sainthood really is to tread. .  I know that I am supposed to embrace the Cross.  I always think about that image in The Passion where Jim Cavizel, who is depicting Christ, kisses the Cross.  How do I kiss this Cross?  These are the questions I struggle with daily and they are some that I will discuss tomorrow when I write about the Church and miscarriage.
 
My prayer is that my story brings you healing.  I do not wish to re-open old wounds.  I can tell you that I cried my eyes out as I wrote this piece.  My heart also hurts for you who have been through this pain.  May Our Lord and Our Lady bring healing and peace to your heart.
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The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary for Miscarriage

I started praying the Rosary this evening and started feeling a pressing of the Holy Spirit to share some thoughts on each of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary for families who experience the pain of miscarriage.
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The First Sorrowful Mystery-The Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane
One of the hardest parts of miscarriage is all of the waiting.  When you initially suspect you are losing your child, you have to wait to confirm.  Then the ultrasound confirms that your baby has died.  The waiting begins for the miscarriage to begin, or be over.  After the miscarriage itself you wait for the agony of the grief to subside.  You wait  to feel joy, peace, or even whole again.  So much waiting.  It can be difficult, but uniting this to Christ’s agony the night before he died can help bring you comfort.  With my last miscarriage, I was exhausted and hurting from all of the waiting.  I was waiting to bleed out my child.  It was agonizing for me.  Think of how Christ felt knowing that he was about to be tortured and crucified.  Most importantly think about how much weight he felt taking on all of our sins.
Look at what Scripture says about the Agony in the Garden. Matthew 26:36-46 “Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”  Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”  Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter.  “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.”  He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”  When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy.  So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.  Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!”
Look at how Our Lord felt.  He was overwhelmed with sorrow.  Isn’t that how it feels to lose a child?  Don’t you too want someone to keep watch with you in that hour of loss?  The pain is unbearable.  Lift your pain and suffering to Christ.  He knows how you feel.  He wants to comfort and wait with you in that hour of need.  He always wants to be there for you.  It is hard, but try.  I know how hard it is to just give the grief over to Him.  You may feel anger, betrayal, or incredible sadness. Or, like me, you may feel all of these emotions.  Give it all up to Him.  Every single emotion, thought, feeling, action.  Ask Him to sit with you in your agony.  Ask Him to welcome your child into His Kingdom.
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The Second Sorrowful Mystery-The Scourging at the Pillar
Our Lord was brutally tortured before he was taken to be crucified.  Anyone who has seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion has caught a glimpse of what Our Lord endured for us before his death.  Miscarriage can be deeply painful physically, mentally, and spiritually.  Depending on the severity the physical pain can be unbearable.  As difficult as it is, offer up each cramp or wave of pain to Christ.  He knows extreme physical and emotional pain.  There will be moments when the grief alone will feel like torture.  Give it over to Christ.  Share with Him your burden.
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The Third Sorrowful Mystery-The Crowning of Thorns
In a great moment of humiliation and torment, Roman soldiers crowned Our Lord with a crown of large thorns.  It is deeply difficult to be crowned in loss.  We may intellectually know that suffering is a part of this journey, but none of us is prepared for the heavy burden of loss, especially losing a child or children.  It is a crown no one wants to wear, but when we lose a child in miscarriage we are given our own crown of thorns.  Unite that loss with Christ.  When someone says something insensitive to you about your miscarriage, remember that Jesus was humiliated as He died for us.  Ask him to help you endure the crown of loss.
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The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery-The Carrying of the Cross
This is the longest portion of the journey.  We must carry the Cross of miscarriage with us for the rest of our lives.  “And bearing his own cross, he went forth to that place which is called Calvary, but in Hebrew Golgotha.” -John 19:17.  Christ had to carry the Cross and we are assured that we must follow Him.  We must bare the pain and anguish.  It may lessen its sting over time, but it never truly goes away.  We must remember anniversary dates, see other people having babies, or miss the children we never got to hold.  Ask your children in Heaven to pray for you as you carry this Cross.  Ask Christ to help you shoulder the burden. Remember how He loves you. In your moments of despair ask Him for help. He is always there, especially in the darkest moments.  He is there helping us put one foot in front of the other.  He whispers to us that we can go on and he helps us carry the Cross.
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The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery-The Crucifixion of Our Lord
The darkest moment in human history came before the brightest.  Our Lord died on the Cross to bring about our salvation.  Miscarriage comes with the death of a child.  Or for many, multiple children are lost over time.  We must learn to give those children back to God.  They are His.  It is deeply painful.  It is hard to let go.  We must unite our own loss and suffering with the power and pain of the Cross.  The Lord who offered Himself up for us will take good care of our babies.  They are, and always were, His.  I struggle greatly with this truth.  In our moments of deep grief, pain, and agony, we must give it up to Christ who died on a Tree.  We can also ask His Mother to pray and comfort us.  She stood by and watched her Son die.  She knows the terrible pain of losing a child.  This is especially helpful during the miscarriage and also while dealing with the grief.  This life is the Cross, but remember the battle is won.  We are a Resurrection people.  We hope in the life to come.
The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary are the perfect prayer for women and families dealing with miscarriage.  Prayer may be difficult.  The nice thing about rote prayer is that it can help get us through the really tough times.  It guides us when we feel like we cannot go on.  Ask Our Lord to comfort, heal, and strengthen you.  Ask Our Heavenly Mother to guide you through the grief back to Her Son.
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Dealing with Miscarriage Part I: The Physical Experience

Today was my final blood draw that was the end of a month of bloodwork to figure out why I keep having miscarriages, post-partum depression/anxiety, and severe PMS.  It was the miscarriages that really led to me finding, or rather she found me, a doctor who was interested in figuring out if I have a hormone issue.  In my next post I want to focus on that experience and the breakthroughs going on in NAPRO.  I am writing about miscarriage because it is a deeply painful experience for families.  It is a pain that most people suffer in silence and there are limited resources to help those dealing with the grief.  This is further complicated by a society that has deluded itself into thinking that an unborn child is not a human baby.  This first part is just going through my own miscarriage experiences at the physical level.  I will then write posts on grief, the spiritual component and Catholic response, and also about resources that are available especially through NAPRO doctors.  So here is the beginning of my story.

In November of 2010, just three months after I got married to my husband, we found out that I was pregnant with our first child.  We were shocked, as most new parents are, but overjoyed.  Shortly after I found out I was pregnant I had some bleeding and called an OB/GYN I had seen advertised on the back of the parish bulletin.  He saw me the next day and told me that we had to wait another week to see if the baby was healthy or not.  After a week of fear, we were overjoyed to learn that our now daughter, Michaela, was perfectly healthy.  However, I was not prepared to learn that she had a twin who had died.  I was stunned and confused by the news.

Miscarriage was never on my radar, after all my mother never lost any children.  What did it mean to lose Michaela’s twin?  My doctor told me that mentally it would be harder than physically, because my body would re-absorb the lost baby rather than have a full miscarriage.  My first pregnancy was a mix of joy and grief. I mourned privately.  This loss was difficult for people to understand.  They all wanted to me to focus on the child who was still alive and I was, but I also grieved the loss of her twin.   I was also violently ill with “morning sickness” for almost all 9 months.  It was a humbling experience that taught me a lot about sacrifice and marriage.

Once I had our beautiful daughter, I would wonder what it would have been like to have twins.  I would see twins and my heart would break or I would cry.  I was so thankful to God for our daughter, but it still hurt.  The grief lessoned as I began my duties as a new mom.  The grief never fully goes away, but time does dull it.

Five months after Michaela was born I discovered that I was pregnant.  We had always planned to be open to children and rarely used the Sympto-Thermal Method of NFP we had been taught.  I was in real shock at first.  I had just had a baby a few months ago along with an unplanned c-section.  After the shock wore off and the happiness started, I began to think about names.  I had always thought Michaela’s twin was a girl, but with this pregnancy I started to think about boy’s names seriously.  I had started getting the pregnancy glow and I was not nearly as sick as I was the first time around.  That should have been a clue. 

I woke up one morning and just did not feel pregnant anymore.  It was a strange feeling.  I ran to the store to get a pregnancy test and the pink line was very faded.  I knew in my gut something was wrong.  Sure enough, in the middle of the night I started to bleed and by 6am I knew that our baby was gone.  It just happened to be the day that our first ultrasound was scheduled, so we went in, and after seeing the images, my doctor sympathetically told me what I already suspected.  We were scheduled to leave for DC that day, so we packed up the car and headed out of town.  We stopped at our church and asked our priest to pray with us and then proceeded onto DC.  The next few days I bled out my child and grieved.  My heart broke in new and profound ways.  I have never known the kind of grief I felt knowing that I was flushing my dead child down the toilet.  All of my miscarriages have been first trimester.

I cried off an on for months.  I was scared to get pregnant again.  My heart hurt too much.  I read the only book I could find for Catholic women on miscarriage.  The resources are scarce.  I talked it over with friends of mine who had lost babies.  I talked to our priest.  And finally I asked our priest to do a Mass in November for families who have lost children, no matter how old.  It was a healing moment.  We never got funerals, so this was good-bye along with prayers for the dead.  I started to feel ready to try again.  We had been open, but I had not gotten pregnant.  I don’t think I was ready.

In early January of this year, I discovered that I was pregnant for the third time.  I was so happy.  Michaela and I made a picture to take to Phil to announce that she was going to be a sister.  But this pregnancy was different.  It was awful.  I was throwing up three days a week and then spent four days feeling like I had debilitating post-partum depression.  I could barely function.  I was wondering what was different and then my early ultrasound came.  Oh how I hate those ultrasounds!  There was a sac but no baby. The doctor tried to tell me that I could just be early or ovulated late, but I knew better.  I pay attention to my body.  A week later my doctor confirmed that the baby had died very early, but my body still thought I was pregnant.  He told me my options were to see if it happened naturally or get a D & E.  For a woman like myself who works to stop abortion and help women in crisis pregnancy, the thought of the same procedure as an abortion did not sit well with me, even if it was for medical reasons and the child was dead.  I said I would try naturally.  After all, I had already been through this.

The next week was horrible.  The bleeding was slow and I felt physically drained.  Then on Sunday night, February 17,  I started to bleed heavily.  At first I was relieved that it hard started, but very quickly I knew that something was wrong.  When you miscarry, the blood is not supposed to flow freely out of you.  You are only suppose to fill a pad every 30 minutes to an hour at the heaviest part. I was filling pads within minutes and then seconds.  I was sent to the ER where they treated my like an actual emergency.  It is actually scarier when the ER responds to you like it is supposed to.  No waiting and a lot of running.  I just remember them trying to get two IVs in and then being rolled into surgery.  I was doped up on morphine at this point.  Having an emergency D&E is a surreal experience.  You go into the hospital bleeding to death and a couple of hours later you walk out barely bleeding.  Thankfully, I had friends who had been through this and I called them right away.  I knew it was dangerous, so I got to the hospital before I needed a blood transfusion.  Ladies, if you are bleeding this much, do not wait.  Go to the ER.  Even if they send you away, it is worth it.  I have had multiple friends who waited too long and needed transfusions and in-patient hospital stays.  You can black out and bleed to death.  It is not something to mess with.  My first miscarriage was a lot like the heaviest days of my period, not like this miscarriage that got to a point in which I would fill a pad by just standing up.

This miscarriage has been the hardest on me.  I still have not recovered physically, mentally, or spiritually from it.  I already had grief to deal with and then had to go through the trauma of a life-threatening miscarriage.  Thank God I live in this time of modern medicine! My body still has not reset to its normal cycle.

I wrote this post to give you a little background on my own personal experiences.  I hope it does not re-traumatize anyone.  I hope it makes you realize that you are not alone.  Feel free to share any of your own stories here.  Tomorrow I will write about my experiences with grief.  If you need a good saint to ask for prayers from I find St. Gianna Molla to be a good one and, of course, Our Heavenly Mother is always willing to listen and pray for you.  I always ask her to care for my babies.  God bless.

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For Liam

 

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I was thinking of you today,
while I ate a bowl of noodles.
Strange how so small a thing can bring you back.
Something as simple as a 19 cent pack of Ramen.
Ramen and rice.
Was all you seemed to live on.
During that time you were my second father.
Joy and pain mix in the bottom of the bowl.
For you are no longer here.
Not on this side of eternity.
It is a surreal feeling for so large a figure in my mind.
So now you know the answers.
While the rest of us must continue on.
I sit here wading through memories as the noodles wrap around my fork.

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Gratitude in a Confession

Enter into the Church and wash away your sins. For here there is a hospital and not a court of law. + St. John Chrysostom +

Have you ever experienced the undeniable presence of Christ in Confession?  He is always there, of course.  It is not the priest who forgives our sins, but Our Lord and Savior in the Sacrament.  I go to Confession regularly.  Why?  Because I am sick and need the Divine Physician.  I quickly become burdened and weighed down by my sins. It reminds me of St. Paul, “I not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rm. 7:15). I get frustrated with myself because I am doing the same things over and over again.  I know there are things that I am addicted to.  I am not talking about just enjoying, I am addicted to them.  I know that these things are not good for me or my family, and yet I still do them.  In large part I do them because I feel empty and need a void filled.  A void that can only be filled by God.  This is how I walked into Confession this past Saturday: heavy and frustrated.

In the first place, I had to take my toddler with me because my husband was helping the Knights out with a fundraiser.  My toddler ran around the Sanctuary while I prepared for Confession.  I have to pick my battles.  I can either hold her down while she screams bloody murder, or I can let her explore a little bit.  When it came to be my turn, I took her in with me.  I laid my soul bare and confessed my sins.  My daughter climbed all over me, but for once, I was too focused to notice or even get frustrated.  The only time I got slightly annoyed was when I could not hear the priest, who I already had to focus on because he has a Nigerian accent.  What happened in that Confession left me awe-struck and thankful.

I felt so weighed down by my addictions that I felt incapable of holiness when I entered that confessional.  Instead, Christ (through the priest for any non-Catholic readers)  first asked me why I came to Confession.  And I said in all honesty, “Because I am tired of hating myself.”  Much to my surprise that was the right answer.  We then discussed a couple of my biggest addictions: pride, anger, coffee, and Facebook.  I was reminded that I am one with my husband and that pride and anger work against that unity.  Something a lot of us forget as we live out our married life.  I need a reminder often.

We then talked about my outward addictions: coffee and Facebook.  Now don’t get me wrong. Facebook and coffee are gifts that are meant to be enjoyed.  God gives us things to enjoy.  It is when we become dependent or make them gods that the problems arise.  During Confession Father asked me why I think that I need coffee?  I said to take care of my daughter because she has more energy than me.  He then told me that I don’t need coffee to take care of my daughter.  I know this to be true because I worked horrible hours on shift for 3 years while I was in the Navy and never drank coffee.  He then asked me how coffee makes me feel.  And I said it gave me energy for a while but then I crash hard around 3pm and “need” another cup.  So he then asked me what I should be drinking and I said water.  He said we have a tendency to  take things that we enjoy and turn them into needs and then they become sinful addictions.   There is nothing in this life that I should “need” besides food and water to survive.  I should not feel like I cannot function without a cup of coffee and more importantly, I should not be willing to sacrifice my principles to get a cup of coffee, which I have been doing.  It is pumpkin spice latte season, which means that I have broken my boycott with Starbuck’s to get a lot of pumpkin spice.  I knew that I was in trouble when my own principles were easily discarded.

I also mention these sins because they directly impact my family.  When I spend too much time on Facebook, it hurts my daughter and my husband.  I focus more on people I used to know than on the people God has given me right now.  It is a strange phenomenon of our age that we can focus so much energy on a virtual world and ignore the flesh and blood right next to us.  In that way I think that the Devil has taken the good that is technology and warped it into something dangerous.  My husband does not enjoy Facebook.  He does not like a lot of what his “friends” post and he knows that it sucks people in for hours on end.  He is absolutely right.  I get lonely sometimes being alone with a two year old and I allow myself to get sucked into the world of “adult” conversation on Facebook.

Coffee is also an issue because it impacts our pocketbook and my well-being.  I am an anxious and neurotic person by nature.  Drinking high amounts of caffeine is not good for my body or my mind.  But, I truly enjoy a hot cup of coffee in the morning.  The problem is that it is no longer a cup in the morning and it is not usually at home where it is much cheaper.  I get into phases where I get a coffee out every single day.  Within 10 days I can spend over $50 on coffee.  When I was single and working full-time that was doable.  Nowadays with a family, mortgage, vehicles dying (my husband’s truck is done), etc. it is not feasible.  No matter what, it is not good for finances, my waistline, or my health.  I said a lot of this during my Confession.  I really needed to be brutally honest with Christ and myself.  These are socially acceptable addictions and without even realizing it we can help enable each other in these addictions.

Then the moment when I knew it was Christ, not the priest, who was talking to me came.  He said, “You can do this.  You can overcome these addictions.”  Given how I felt going into the Confession that day, my ability to overcome my sins was not something I felt capable of in that moment.  And I have only written about a few of the sins I struggle with daily.  The 7 deadly sins and I are well acquainted.  However, once it was said, I felt like Christ had picked me up off of the floor, dusted me off, and said you can do this, keep going.  I will be here to help you.  I started crying tears of joy.  The gratitude I felt was overwhelming.

Confession is not truly for God.  Yes, we must seek forgiveness for our sins, but Confession is about our healing.  Sin hurts us.  Sin can kill our very souls.  This disconnects us from Christ.  We run in shame and fear.  We get frustrated and despair.  The Divine Physician knew that we need somewhere to unburden and unload our sins, to be set free from them, and strengthened by His grace for the journey.  Sin keeps us from being who God created us to be.  Sins are not a laundry list of things that keep us from enjoying life.  They are a list of things to avoid in order to become the person Christ created us to be.  Sin enslaves us.  I know this to be the case.  I went into Confession feeling like a slave.  I felt chained and it was only Christ who could break my bonds.  I left Confession set free.

Does that mean that temptation departed from me?  Absolutely not.  This is a spiritual battle that lasts a lifetime.  I still feel the tug to do this or that, but by God’s grace I am saying “no” more often.  And that is the point.  Sainthood does not come overnight.  Most of us do not have dramatic conversions.  Instead it takes us our entire lives to overcome sin.  Christ died for our sins, but it is our job to work to overcome the sins we committ in our lifetime.  He will forgive us no matter how many times we have to come back and seek that forgiveness.  As Pope Francis said recently, “Never forget this:  The Lord never gets tired of forgiving us.  It is we who get tired of asking for forgiveness.”

A few more things to be thankful for today:

–All the new words my daughter is learning

–Writing

–My husband working hard for us today and helping out the Knights after a long day of work

–My friend Ann watching Michaela for a couple of hours so I can attend a talk at church

–Second to last hormone blood draw is finished

–Cooler days

–Pumpkin spice bread

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The Cast of Characters

I decided to move over to WordPress. It is a move that I have been contemplating for a while. A lot of my friends who blog use WordPress and I like the look of their blogs. I have also been debating what I really want my blog to be about. More than anything it is about me writing. I really enjoy writing and I have a wide variety of interests. I decided that I no longer want to be pigeon-holed into writing about one topic. For instance, my last blog attempt had to do with craft projects I do around the house. Well, that is a part of my vocation. So my blog is about everything and anything related to my vocation and journey in this life. I like the Holiness in Motherhood blog title because that is what I am striving for each day. I fall short, but holiness is the meaning of life.

On this blog you can expect me to write about my family, theology, the Church, crafts, poetry, photography, cooking, teaching my daughter, current issues of the day, etc. Pretty much anything that I decide to write about. I have had multiple blogs in the past and I always have felt limited by them. No more! I will transfer over some of my old posts before I shut down my Blogger account.

First, for those of you who do not know me personally, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Constance. I am a stay-at-home mom to one beautiful 2 year old girl. I have been married for just over 3 years to a wonderful man who works hard for us and who is teaching me the art of selflessness. I am a Navy Veteran and I have a BA in Psychology that I never plan to use. I intend to homeschool our daughter and any other children, should The Lord bless us with more. We are devout Roman Catholics. My husband and I really enjoy being involved in our Church. I like to stay up with current happenings in the Church and in the world, but I have to take a step back a lot of the time because I become too empathetic to my own detriment. I like to garden, cook, take pictures, walk and run (when I force myself), read, and play with my toddler. I am in the process of discerning becoming a Lay Dominican. That’s a quick about me.

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My husband’s name is Phil, but these days he mainly goes by Daddy. We met online 4 years ago on the dating site Catholic Match. We both were looking to marry committed Catholics, but he lived in the mountains of North Carolina and I lived in East Tennessee, which meant that there were not a lot of young Catholics in our area. After all we both lived in Baptist country. And while Baptists are lovely people, neither of us would ever convert. My husband is a very talented woodturner and I am sure I will be posting pictures of his work on the blog. He is the Director of Training for a building science training center. He is a 3rd Degree in the Knights of Columbus and is deeply committed to our family. There have been numerous times that I have been awed by God’s choice of Phil for my husband.

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Our beautiful daughter’s name is Michaela. She is named for St. Michael the Archangel and my father. We knew that given the state of the world, any children we have would need strong patron and patronesses. Her middle name, Elizabeth, is for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, a great saint for homeschoolers. Michaela is 2 years old and she is pretty much insane. She has so much energy and can barely sit still for 5 minutes at a time. She is a climber, explorer, strong willed, extremely affectionate, and she is the most amazing person that I have met. There have been numerous times throughout the past couple of years that I have looked at her and thought, “God, what were you thinking giving this amazing person to me, of all people?”, as well as, “Thank you God, she is the most incredible gift I have ever received.” My daughter inspires me, frustrates me, loves me, stuns me, and humbles me on a daily basis. While it can be a struggle for me to stay home at times because it can get lonely, I would not have it any other way. I am sure you will hear plenty about her on this blog.

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This is my family. We do have 3 lovely babies in Heaven (Victoria, Caleb, and Marie). I am sure that I will write about miscarriage from time-to-time because I know that there are other women who are grieving out there just like me.

I greatly appreciate you stopping by the blog and I pray that Our Lord blesses you by my words. There are so many writers out there who bless me with their writing. Have a blessed day!