This is the story of my first miscarriage. I have been very slow at typing my own stories up for this site. I suppose in some ways it was so painful I haven't felt much like reliving it. But since you are all sharing with me, I feel I should share in turn.

Steve and I had three children very fast: by the time Sarah, our third, was born, Rachel was four months shy of 3 and Michael was 20 months old. We waited about oh, a long eighteen months before we felt it was time to try to have another child, through answers to prayer.

A few months later I became pregnant, to our excitement. All went well, and I was not very sick, but sick enough to know I was pregnant. At eight weeks along, we heard bad news from my husband's family. Steve's grandfather was failing rapidly and we would need to fly to Seattle from Kansas City to see him one last time before he passed away. It was December 1994.

Since I was pregnant, my OB wanted to do a sonogram before I flew out, to make sure everything was fine. Both Steve and I felt the stress of losing Grandpa imminently and thought this would be a good idea, to put our minds at rest. On December 7th we went to the doctor's office. My OB started the sonogram examination, and shortly began to frown. Steve and I exchanged glances, wondering. The doctor looked for a long time before saying anything. Then he said, "I'm afraid you're having a miscarriage," and did a vaginal ultrasound to be certain. By the end of the exam we were all certain there was no living tissue there. No heartbeat. Just a mass of tissue that was far too small for eight weeks' gestation. He showed us other pictures of eight-week development to demonstrate the difference. Those photos were obviously much farther developed than the shapeless lump inside of me.

It was a shock. I had no idea anything was outside the norm. I had no cramping, no bleeding or spotting, no signs. I had to take it on faith and on the sonogram that the D & C the doctor scheduled for the following morning was not going to remove a living child. My OB also reassured us that as a devout Catholic, he would never perform an abortion, and would not consider the surgery unless he was 100% sure there was no chance it was viable. That helped, a little.

The surgery was uneventful and we went home later that day. In the midst of this we were rescheduling flight times and travel arrangements so that we could fly the following Monday. We did get to see Grandpa, and it was wonderful to visit with him, although we could tell he was quickly becoming weak. We came back home to Kansas City, and Grandpa passed away on December 20th, 1994. Steve flew back for the funeral, but the rest of us could not. All in all, it made for one depressing Christmas season.

I didn't really cry over the loss of the baby much then. I couldn't. I felt like it happened so early on, and this kind of thing happens all the time--there couldn't be that much to cry about. I set it aside and denied my need to grieve. But I was wrong. It wasn't until much later, when I lost another baby, Richard, that the tears came, and freely. For both of them at once.

I named her Emily, because I have always liked that name, and I felt inside myself that it was a girl. There was no biological way of knowing this, of course. But sometimes you have to trust your feelings. Sometimes I would sing the Simon & Garfunkel song, "For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her," to her, wherever she is, hoping she might hear me. Over time I have come to feel she is mine, and I will see her again. In the meantime, I believe Grandpa and Grandma Adams are caring for her and Richard in the Spirit World, as they used to help us care for our other children.

Linda Adams
Webmaster, Little Ones Lost

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