Tag: miscarriage

To Tell or Not to Tell

Some of you may think we’re crazy to tell people as soon as we know we’re pregnant, and maybe you’re right.  Most couples wait until they have solid news to report: a heartbeat, the completion of a successful first trimester, and ultrasound picture…  We don’t wait because we never know if we’ll have anything other than a positive pregnancy test to report, and we don’t want to wait for you to start praying.  Less than 1% of the population experiences recurrent miscarriages (three or more), and we are the 1%. (Insert Occupy joke of your choice here…)

The average couple doesn’t have to face the thought that they probably won’t have a successful outcome, even if they’ve experienced a miscarriage.  We do – every time.  Given that we want the troops out in force praying for us, we always talk about it but come to the same conclusion to tell immediately.  Plus, we’re very bad at keeping secrets about ourselves, so if someone asked about my switch to half-caf or decaf, I wouldn’t think before responding that pregnant people shouldn’t have too much caffeine.  I probably risk sharing too much most of the time, but I’d rather over-share than find myself in the miserable place of a few years ago where I was too afraid to talk to anyone.

Besides the prayer support, I would rather people know that we have loved and lost than wonder why I’m being such a crank.  Not telling people about the pregnancy and possibly the subsequent miscarriage would feel a lot like losing a close family member and never telling anyone that they even existed.  I prefer having the emotional support and understanding when I feel like I’m losing my mind during the grieving process than leaving a wake of emotional outbursts behind for people to wonder about.  At least now if I burst out crying at a Lego commercial (it’s happened) you can chalk it up to grief rather than mental defect (I have plenty of those, too…).

The down side of telling everyone immediately is dealing with the aftermath if things don’t work out.  News travels pretty fast, but in our situation there are people who will find out about the pregnancy a month after we’ve already lost it.  It’s awkward to tell someone who’s congratulating you that there’s nothing left to congratulate.  I also tend to feel ridiculous for telling everyone we’re expecting only to tell them a week later that it’s over.  There’s no reason for me to be embarrassed about it, but that’s always my first reaction.  I always think that people will think we’re silly for sharing so soon.  That feeling evaporates almost as quickly as it appears because of the wonderful support and encouragement we get from our family and friends.

For us, telling before we have solid proof of a viable pregnancy is the best option, but it may not be for everyone.  If you find yourself in a similar situation, you’ll have to decide what you’ll be comfortable with.  I find it easier to share now than I did a few years ago, and the openness has helped me tremendously.  But there are plenty of folks who just aren’t comfortable with sharing personal details, and that’s perfectly fine.  Just make sure that you have a small network of friends you can trust and who will support you.  Do not attempt to deal with the grief alone; even superheroes need help on occasion – you are no exception.

October 15th – How You Can Help

You are all invited to the October 15th Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day memorial service (details here https://mabbat.wordpress.com/october-15th-memorial-service/).  If you can’t come but would like to participate, here are a few ways you can help:

PRAY!!  Pray that women and families who need healing will come to this event and find comfort and acceptance.  Pray that those who need help and/or counseling will have the courage to ask for it through our registration cards.  Pray that God will use this time to draw people into relationship with him.

Light a candle.  And tell someone why you’re lighting it.  There is an “official” Wave of Light you can participate in by lighting a candle on October 15th at 7:00 p.m. in whatever time zone you live in and letting it burn for an hour, the idea being that there is a continuous wave of light that begins that evening and covers the whole country as an act of remembrance.   Even if you haven’t lost a baby, if you read this blog, you know someone who has.  Given that 10-15% of all acknowledged pregnancies end in miscarriage, and some estimates put the actual number at 40% of all pregnancies (March of Dimes statistics), you know someone else who has lost a child this way.

Give back.  Donate time, supplies or money to an organization who is working to save lives, like Sav-A-Life (www.savalife.org).  Or a non-profit foster care and adoption agency, like Agape (www.agapeforchildren.org).  I mention these because I have friends who work for both of these agencies, and they do a lot of good work in the local community.

There are lots of ways to help out even if you can’t or don’t want to attend an event.

October 15th Memorial Service

October 15th is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.  If you live in the Birmingham, Alabama area, I would like to invite you to a memorial service at Oak Mountain State Park (Bluejay Pavilion 10:30 am).  I won’t repeat everything I just added to the page, so look to your right and click on “October 15th Memorial Service” under the Pages tab.  I am also (I think) posting the publicity flyer at the end of this post, so please print it out and invite anyone you know who might be interested.  If I do it right, there will be both a PDF and a Word 2010 file.  I would love for anyone who reads this blog to come, whether you have experienced a pregnancy or infant loss or not.  You have been a tremendous support for me, and I would love for you to share in this special time of remembrance.  If nothing else, come later and bring a picnic lunch – we have the pavilion reserved for the whole day.

 

October 15th Flyer

October 15th Flyer (PDF)

All I Want for Christmas…

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday – not for any one reason in particular, but Christmas on the whole is pretty great.  There are special decorations, special songs, special events that all center on God’s greatest gift to earth that wouldn’t be realized as such until Christ’s death and resurrection.  Christmas is a promise that the gift of a miraculous birth would end up bringing rebirth for all humanity.  I’m sure as a kid that Christmas was all about getting gifts, but at some point the gift emphasis shifted to finding good gifts to give others.  I love finding or making something that suits the recipient and shows them in some small way that I love them enough to find something they will like or will use.  One of my favorite Christmas mornings was the year that my siblings and I decided to be Santa for our parents.  We gathered a few special big gifts, we painted (probably horribly tacky since flourescent puff paint was involved, but proudly well-worn anyway) sweatshirts for them and conned at least one grandmother into helping us purchase some extra little things.  Since my room was the only one downstairs and thus closest to the tree, I squirreled away the extra loot and woke up super early to put our Santa gifts out before the grand entrance to the living room.  I couldn’t wait to see my parents see their Santa loot; it was probably all I thought about for weeks.

Christmas has always been a sparkly, magical time.  I really want to feel that way again about my favorite holiday, but over the last several years, it has been difficult to rally any luster at all.  Until this year, I hadn’t even gotten the pre-lit tree out for two years in a row, and we only had stockings out for Christmas day.  Three years ago, I wouldn’t have had a tree up at all except my brother and sister put it up the weekend before Christmas; I wouldn’t let them decorate it so that I wouldn’t have to pack up ornaments.  This year, I actually decorated, and we have wreaths in the window and lights and garland on the porch and ornaments on the tree.  I think subconsciously I wanted the decorations to ignite the Christmas spirit I lost (okay, maybe it was more like a deliberate effort rather than a subconscious desire), but it hasn’t really worked the way I had hoped.  Nor have the copious Christmas songs on the radio or the peppermint coffee or the eggnog or the crazy neighborhood assortment of lights and inflatable figures (including a nativity scene with wise men) elicited the same kind of zeal I used to have for all things Christmas.

The only thing that’s close is the joy of matching the right gift with the right person, and even that has taken a few years to get back.  The worst Christmas ever was the one right after the third miscarriage.  It happened right before Christmas, and each family gathering was just an exercise in emotional control.  I wanted nothing more than to disappear or hibernate; I think I actually prayed for a hole in the earth to open and swallow me up during one of the family gift exchanges.  For the first time in my life, I just bought stuff to wrap so that everyone who was supposed to have a gift would get something from us.  While there is something to be said for getting through a tough time even if it’s by rote, there was no joy at all in that Christmas.  It was hard enough dealing with the first post-miscarriage Christmas knowing what could have been, but Christmas hasn’t been the same since that one horrible year.  You’d think (or I used to, anyway) that if you love something as much as I loved the Christmas season, that it would be a simple thing to just enjoy it no matter what.  Perhaps that is the most insidious thing about grief and depression: it robs you of the simplest joys or changes them just enough to be both recognizable and simultaneously unattainable – the oasis you can see with water you can never drink.

I’m sure a Dickensian catharsis awaits (cue the orchestrated carol of your choice and ringing bells here) if I could only embrace the true meaning of Christmas.  But the reality is that special holidays that focus on family time are just hard to deal with.  It is nearly impossible to mark the holiday season without also marking the milestones we’re missing.  For the day that I got to be pregnant not quite two months ago (think pregnant without feeling like everything is going wrong), I ticked off the markers in my head: by Christmas, we would have seen the heartbeat on ultrasound; by Valentine’s, we would have been entering the second trimester; by my birthday, we would know if it was a boy or a girl…  The main marker being the heartbeat and the only thing I told God I wanted for Christmas – the same way a child puts only one thing on their list when they know it’s a huge gift.  I think everyone did that as a child with some outrageous desire, even if you were too afraid to say it out loud: “If I got a pony for Christmas, I wouldn’t want anything else,” even if you were happy with every other present you got, and even if you knew you were never going to get a pony.  That heartbeat was my outrageous wish list for Christmas, and that’s another reason Christmas spirit is hard to come by.

Even though I didn’t get my heartbeat, and if I never got anything else, all I really want for Christmas is to love Christmas again.  I miss whole-heartedly singing carols without crying when I really think about the words; I miss driving around at night looking at lights; I miss the innocence of Christmas without loss.