A special thanks to Jen for sharing her story. I very much agree "With
God all things are possible" and you and your Rainbow Baby are proof.
Last Wednesday was Baby Abigail’s 2nd birthday in
heaven. Unfortunately our/her story is
far too common. Just like the title of
this blog, we thought having a baby was going to be easy. People get pregnant every day without even
trying. We followed all the
“rules”. We had a five year plan that
included buying a house, practice parenting with dogs, and making some
advancements in our careers. We kicked
of “The Year of the Baby” with a grand two week trip to Europe. In my mind we would go on this trip and come
home with a souvenir baby. A baby that
would of course be cultured and worldly due to being conceived in Europe. When it didn’t happen that month I really
wasn’t all that upset because it was kind of a crazy dream to begin with. However, two months later those famous pink
lines showed up and changed everything forever.
I had seen tons of creative ideas of how to tell your husband you’re
pregnant but when it came down to it I was so excited/nervous/anxious I
couldn’t muster any creativity. So I
just handed him the pee stick and started making plans. I went in to my doc for bloodwork to confirm
I was indeed pregnant and everything came back perfect. A few weeks later, July 18th (I’ll
never forget), we were scheduled for a sonogram. When the picture came up on the screen, there
was nothing there. Of course it’s not
like I had spent a lot of time looking at sonograms so I wasn’t really sure
what I was looking at but I knew it wasn’t right. Shouldn’t there be a gummy bear shaped baby
in there? Aren’t we supposed to hear a
heartbeat? The technician didn’t say
anything other than ask when my last period was and then passed us along to my
doctor. She told us that more than
likely I had a Blighted Ovum in which the yolk sac and placenta develop but the
fertilized egg either stops developing at an early point or never develops at
all. She said that I would naturally
miscarry within a few weeks. I cried the
entire way home. I called my mom. I laid on the couch on a towel the rest of
the day thinking my insides would fall out at any point. I read far too many articles online about
miscarriage and saw far too many references to the baby as “medical waste”. The physical miscarriage itself wasn’t too
horrible I guess. It took two weeks
which seemed like forever but it started slowly and only by the grace of God I
was able to mentally block out what was going on with my body. The big day happened while we were on
vacation with family in Georgia. I
somehow managed to get through the day, stopping at every bathroom along the
way. That night though I said I didn’t
feel well and stayed home while everyone went to dinner. I basically rotated between the bed and the
bathroom all night. It was painful
mentally and physically. I cried more
than I knew I could cry. But somehow I
knew it wasn’t in our plan to have that baby.
For me, the mental
aspect of this miscarriage far outweighed the physical. I had a really hard time coping with the fact
that I had lost something that I never really had. It is crazy how attached you become to your baby
so quickly and then to have it taken away in an instant. I have always believed that life begins at
conception so I knew in my heart that a life had existed but wasn’t sure to
what extent. I didn’t know how long our
baby had lived or how much of our baby had developed. Was our baby a boy or a
girl? I felt an extreme need to
acknowledge this life and give our baby the respect he/she deserved. I firmly believed that our baby’s spirit was
in heaven and I didn’t want her to be disappointed in me if I just moved on
with my life. I felt like I was grasping
at thin air. I prayed a lot but what I
prayed for the most was to know our baby.
One day God placed the name Abigail in my heart. It’s not a name that I would have chosen on
my own so I knew it was from God. Just
having a name and the identity of a girl made a world of difference. I could pray for her. I could grieve her. I could acknowledge her. I looked up the meaning of the name Abigail
to see why God had chosen that name. It
means “My Father’s Joy”. In the Bible,
Abigail is the wife of King David and is described as intelligent, beautiful
and humble. There’s a lot more to the
story but that much sounded good to me.
Even though I felt better about our angel baby, it was still weird to
reference those 9 weeks that I had been pregnant. It was weird to start sentences with “when I
was pregnant….” Or “hey remember that time we went to Top Golf when I was
pregnant”. It felt like a vacuum of time
that didn’t really exist. Fast forward a
few weeks. I had recently learned to be
open to “God Moments” and to recognize the sometimes small presence of God in
every day occurrences. One of these
moments was when I was flipping through the TV channels and came across Joel
Osteen talking about the verse Matthew 7:7.
“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and
the door will be opened for you.” He
made a point that I will never forget that sometimes you have to speak things
into truth. I looked up one of the verses he had referenced.
“Have faith in God. Truly I tell
you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if
you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to
pass, it will be done for you. So I tell
you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it
will be yours”
Mark 11:22-24
He specifically said that if you are wanting a baby and it
hasn’t been your time yet, that you should buy something for your future baby,
thank God for your baby and pray for that baby every day until they show
up. And so we did. We picked out an adorable froggy outfit from
Carter’s. Teeny tiny pants. Impossibly
small bodysuit. And a silly frog
hat. I hung it from one of the knobs on
my dresser. Every morning I would hold
the little froggy close to my heart and pray.
I asked Baby Abigail and Mother Mary to pray with me. I cannot describe to you the overwhelming
peace that this gave me. I knew in my
heart that someday, somehow our baby would wear that little frog outfit. I didn’t know how or when, but it wasn’t for
me to know. Fast forward a little more…now
we are in November. In the Catholic
Church, November 2nd is celebrated as All Soul’s Day where we pray
for the faithfully departed in Purgatory.
I had read and heard a lot of conflicting information about where unborn
babies go for their eternal life. This
is a sticky subject I know. But I had
been encouraged by a friend of mine to attend.
The mass was beautiful. The
lights were low. The music was slow. Everyone had candles. At some point in the mass we were encouraged
to come to the front and say the name of our departed loved one and place our
candle on the steps leading to the alter.
So husband and I cautiously went to the front, said “We pray for Baby
Abigail” and set our candle down. This
felt like the end of a long journey. I
had finally found peace with what had happened and had found a way to respect
the life that had been given to us for such a short time. Six days later two pink lines showed up
again. This pregnancy started out a
little rocky and at moments I seriously doubted it. Sometimes it was hard to be excited when I
kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But I kept reminding myself of God’s promise of the rainbow.
Our Rainbow Baby
wearing his silly froggy outfit. With
God all things are possible.
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