This is the story of my second miscarriage.

After we lost Emily, we waited the requisite three months my doctor imposed before trying to become pregnant again. After that, it still did not happen immediately as I had hoped. In June 1995, I got a positive home pregnancy test and made doctor appointments. Neither Steve nor I had as much hope this time around. Losing one baby suddenly made the whole process so much more frightening.

We have a fine obstetrician. We have been blessed. He is very empathetic and understanding, having been through several years of infertility, himself. (He now has three children two years apart, ha!--a set of twins!) Since I had previously miscarried, he told us we could come in every week for a sonogram if we liked, and he would not bill our insurance. He said it was worth the peace of mind. So at seven weeks along, we saw the heartbeat. At ten and twelve weeks, I watched my baby grow and develop inside me. It was wonderful. Magnificent. I brought home pictures. At the twelfth week appointment, we watched him kick his legs and bounce around, lively as could be. (*We didn't know then it was a boy.) At that appointment I remember wanting to hear the heartbeat, but I felt silly asking since we could see it beating there on the screen, and did not. I didn't know it was my only chance, and I missed it.

Since all was going well and I was out of the "danger zone," we let the news out about my pregnancy and made the next appointment for one month later. I will never forget that appointment. My doctor listened and prodded with the Doppler instrument, rubbing my belly, for what seemed like half an hour. We heard nothing. The silence was tense. He tried and tried to find the heartbeat as we listened to an empty reading of nothing but gurgles. I watched as he shut his eyes and concentrated intently as he listened. I could feel he wanted to find it as much as I wanted it to be there. Finally, he sent me to his other office with the sonogram equipment, and his partner performed the test, confirming our worst fears. There he lay, inside me, lifeless.

The previous night I had gone to bed with a little cramping and spotting, and mild worry. I had a dream that night which I did not fully understand until later. The dream was of two small children running happily hand in hand along a grassy, hilly street, which seemed to be lined with trees. One was a boy and one a girl, about the same size (around age four), with the same color hair. I felt they were my children and that they were very happy. I didn't understand until later that this was meant to be Richard with Emily, his sister whom I had previously lost.

After the sonogram we were told I could wait until nature took its course if we wished, within a reasonable time frame. I felt I would prefer to wait until something external happened--some sign my body knew it was time to deliver this child. We went home. I spent about 24 hours or so with the baby inside me, dead, before I called the doctor to schedule induced labor. Maybe this sounds morbid, but it was a very real and awful feeling knowing my uterus had become my baby's tomb. I couldn't live with that feeling any longer.

We went to the hospital the next morning, to the labor and delivery ward. The baby was too big to remove safely with a D & C procedure; also I couldn't bear the thought of that happening to this little body. I had seen his arms and legs kicking just one month before. I was given gel to soften my cervix, which brought on labor. I was surprised that it was, in fact, real labor, but on a much smaller scale than I had experienced delivering my other three babies. They offered me an epidural, but I refused. I had had the others naturally, and knew I could manage it. They did not want me to be in much discomfort, and neither did I, really, so I was given Stadol, which took away the pain and made me feel floaty and sleepy. It was not long before it was time to deliver, and I began bleeding I guess profusely. The doctor needed to push on my uterus to assist the delivery, and because I hadn't had an epidural and this procedure would be too painful, they took me in immediately to the OR and put me under general anesthetic. At that point, I was glad to have missed the actual delivery.

While I was in the OR, Steve had to sit out in the recovery room, worrying. During this time he received an impression from the Spirit that "We had lost a son--we lost Richard." He was very touched that Richard's name came to him. I was touched also. (The other children's names came by revelation through me: a dream or a voice speaking to me.)

I was anxious to be able to see my baby, the body I delivered. They had told us that it was old, ceasing development about two weeks before, and quite frankly might not be delivered whole. If it was not, they would not let me see it, which I understood. I kept asking about it while my body was trying to wake up from the anesthetic.

Once I awoke and Steve had spoken with the doctor, his impression was confirmed: it was a boy, and was delivered whole with the sac unbroken. We were allowed to see him. Others have told me they wouldn't want to look, but for me it was of vital importance to see the result of my pregnancy. The doctor held him up in his hand. I remember I didn't touch him or hold him myself, I was a little afraid to do that. His skin was yellowish and he was the size of a newborn kitten in the doctor's hand. We counted his fingers, all ten, all perfect. Ten perfect, incredibly tiny, tiny toes. Tiny, closed eyes, well-formed ears and nose, and a mouth that opened and closed when the doctor nudged his jaw with his finger. We stared in wonder. It was amazing to me to see that it really does look exactly as the photos of development show, when they take internal photographs at different stages.

It occurred to me at that point that what the doctor held in his hand was truly a complete body. All the right parts were there. This was a real baby, albeit the smallest I'd ever seen. (We were still four weeks and some-odd ounces away from it being termed a stillbirth rather than a "late-term miscarriage.") It struck me that as this was indeed a body I saw before me, a body that once contained life--I saw him moving a few weeks before!--it must be that he can and will be resurrected someday. It must be. That was at least a small comfort.

From inspecting the cord and the placenta, there was a narrow constricted part of the umbilicus near the placenta, of about half an inch. The cord was also placed slightly off the center of the placenta, but the doctor said that fact was neither here nor there. Most likely, he said, there was a knot or kink in the cord that somehow eventually got pulled tight, cutting off circulation. That's all that could be determined was wrong with him. (They did not do an autopsy since the cord was obviously the problem.) It is just something that happens sometimes. While I was in the hospital recovering, they put a picture of a rose outside my door to signal the other staff about our situation. This thankfully kept anyone from coming in and asking how the new baby was doing.

I wrote in my journal on October 17, 1995: "I know there is a world beyond ours where God dwells, where we came from, where we will return when life is over; a world and a place which can and will communicate with us when necessary. It is very real to me. The veil has parted for me too powerfully on certain occasions to discount it as imagination or fantasy. Even this knowledge does not much ease the pain of the loss I feel--we both feel--at not having either of these children. Knowing I could easily have had a four-month old baby girl right now; knowing that also at this moment I should be feeling the first flutters and kicks of Richard's legs and arms in my womb, and instead I feel nothing but emptiness in a still swollen stomach.

"...Oh how we wanted a boy! A little brother for Michael to share with before he gets so old they will have little in common. A girl would also have been blissfully welcome. But he was everything we wanted. Why did he have to die? He was so perfect. There was nothing wrong with his body. The cord failed. Why?

"...I feel shaky now, almost every day, shaky with grief and suppressed anger. I complained to God today that I did not know what to do with my anger--I know it must be expressed somehow but all possible ways of dealing with it were ruled out to me. My kids are sick with some odd flu and fever, so I could not go on a walk with them, and I was not about to ask anyone to take over watching my children when they're sick, much less desert them when they need me--so I had absolutely no good outlet to vent it, and absolutely will not take it out on them. I was so frustrated I went to my room and buried myself in my pillow. I asked for help. I seemed to hear God say, gently, "Give it to me." I sat and tried to understand how. How do I do that? How do you just give a burden like anger to the Lord? I just started to cry...

"...Steve is hurting but is very supportive, I have a few friends I can talk to, and yet I'm still shaking. I'm not sure where to go from here."

After this moment, of course life went on without stopping. Christmas was again a burden the second year in a row. That year it was even harder to find hope. I could not bear to sing carols of the infant Jesus, the birth of that beautiful sweet newborn boy, when I had just lost my opportunity to give birth to my own. "Silent Night" alone could send me into a fit of tears.

Our children knew about this pregnancy. The first was so early on we had not told them, and they were too young to understand Mom was anything more than "sick" while I recovered from that first miscarriage. Now we had to explain their little brother had died. It was hard for them to understand. Rachel, our oldest, then age five, colored me a little picture of Richard with crayons. She put it in a frame of popsicle sticks decorated with puffy fabric paint that a friend had given her, which I still keep on a shelf in my bedroom.

I went through months of fitful crying and fitful praying, searching for unknown answers, unanswered prayers, occasionally getting a gentle reminder that I needed to ask the right questions before I could know the answers. I dove back into writing, I found the Internet and made friends, I started writing my novel in earnest (which has nothing to do with miscarriage). In many ways I kept myself too busy to think about it. But as each month my period still started, I cried and cried. I went in cycles of being angry with God and not speaking to Him at all, to pleading with Him for answers, for mercy, for relief from this anguish. I was not ungrateful for the children I already had. They are wonderful. But they did not replace the emptiness, the yearning for a new tiny baby to hold and care for. I did not want Richard's pregnancy to be my last, and was not at all ready to accept it if that was the Lord's will for me.

Thankfully, it was not. I had always felt impressed, from the beginning of my marriage, that I would someday have a little blond boy, and that we would be very close. Months went by. In March 1996 I became pregnant, which was both a relief and a new worry.

It became the most difficult pregnancy I experienced to date. It could have been worse. I was only on bed rest five weeks instead of the entire nine months. The last seven weeks I was in such excruciating pain I cried myself to sleep every night, knowing I still had many weeks and days to go. Until the hour my baby Jacob was delivered successfully, I did not know whether the Lord would allow me to keep this child or whether it was His will to take this one also.

During this pregnancy I still grieved for the others some, but had much else on my mind then. Slowly the pain eased and washed away as I gave it over to the Lord and let Him take care of things, instead of trying to do it all on my own. Still, it was not until after Jacob was born on December 13, 1996 that I finally felt healed from the pain of losing the others. I had a new baby to cradle in my arms; my arms no longer ached with raw longing. While I knew he was not the same baby as the two I had lost, I felt hope again. I felt immense relief. This is not to say it wasn't still a struggle. His first few weeks of life were filled with uncertainty and challenges tougher than I'd experienced with the other three. But gradually he picked up and started growing to the doctor's liking, and now is a very tall, happy, energetic two-year-old. His smile and laughter bring joy to my day. Without him here, I don't know how I would be managing. I thank the Lord for blessing me with him. ...And yes, he is blond.

Linda Adams
Webmaster, Little Ones Lost

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