Dear sisters, this article is about miscarriage. Some things I share may be a little too much if you are in the early weeks of pregnancy waiting for that first appointment, or if a loss is still fresh in your memory. It’s ok to skip reading this for now if that is what is best for you. For the rest, I hope what I share will be an encouragement and a help—if you have suffered pregnancy loss, may it remind you that you are not alone and that your have a heavenly Father who cares for you; and if you have not, may this help you to understand what many, many women experience during their childbearing years so that you can love them well in your own community. >hugs<

Today might have been my due date.

The pregnancy was a surprise. We had discussed perhaps trying for another child before my fertility ran out (for reference, I’ll be 40 this fall), but we hadn’t made any decision yet to do so. We were both shocked when the test was positive.

My youngest son was 12. There would have been a 13 year gap. I was excited at the thought of a new baby, but I mourned the gap.

We had sold our minivan over the summer and replaced it with a pick-up truck. Vehicle prices had gone way up, and it looked like we would need to find another van.

We were in the middle of a very busy Christmas season, and with my pregnancy-induced autoimmune disease looming on the horizon, I had to find a doctor—and the right one–FAST.

To say that this news rocked our world would not be an understatement.

To add injury to shock, a few hours after the positive pregnancy test, my oldest fell on his other arm, and we were off to the emergency room that very same day.

Thankfully the fracture was mild this time, but while he was still in a brace, his brother got the flu, and we missed Christmas with my family. We tried to go down for New Year’s, but Nathaniel and my oldest got sick as well. We prayed, were careful, invested in some TamiFlu, and I thankfully managed to stay well.

Even so, my first OB appointment got delayed a week since we still had some lingering flu symptoms in the house.

Before moving on, I want to take a moment here to share how I related to God through this time of expectant waiting…

I knew I was a much older mom at this point, and that the likelihood of pregnancy loss was much higher. But I thanked God for the gift of new life, no matter what would come of it. To be expecting again was a gift. To be carrying a child, to love a child I could not yet see, was a gift. No matter what happened.

In terms of symptoms, I marveled that my initial hint-of-queasiness that started at 6 weeks hadn’t ramped up any by almost 8 weeks. Maybe this pregnancy would be different!

And indeed it was.

At what should have been 7 weeks and about 5 days, the ultrasound, though it showed a sac and everything in the right place, measured only 5 weeks and 5 days. No visual on the baby. No heartbeat.

“Everything looks good. It could just be that we’re working on a different time line than we originally thought.”

But I’d been charting my cycles for 16 years. I had the dates right. I knew something wasn’t right.

We were very pleased with the doctor and her staff, however. They were absolutely wonderful. And we were relieved to have a doctor who would readily prescribe the medication I needed to manage my autoimmune disease with nothing more than a phone call as soon as it started to flare up.

To get a better picture of how I was progressing, they drew blood to check HCG levels. And scheduled me to come back two days later to check it again.

But later that evening I started spotting. I thought perhaps it was related to a potential UTI, for which they’d given me antibiotics. By the next morning, it had gotten worse, and I was in pain.

By the day of my follow-up HCG draw, the pain grew intense. I had labored without pain medication for both of my boys, and would gladly do it again, but seeing the writing on the wall, I took a Tylenol to take the edge off for the ride to doctor’s office, which was awful. I’d never labored in a vehicle before. My autoimmune disease had required us to induce twice, so this was a new experience. That car ride was the worst.

Given my symptoms, we did another ultrasound to check on things. This time there was no sac to be seen. I could hear the heartbeat from another baby in another room, but again none in mine. I went home to wait.

The next day I stayed in bed and by evening had lost the pregnancy—and whatever there was of a tiny, yet unseen by me, baby—in the toilet.

I stayed home from church the next morning. Physically needing rest and knowing that I just couldn’t handle it emotionally yet anyway.

Friends took good care of us, bringing us meals. I can’t say enough how wonderful it was to be so well cared for. Our family and church family are such a blessing.

And we got to return the favor rather quickly, as a friend at a similar place in pregnancy had the same experience one week later. We grieved together and prayed for one another.

Once I had rested adequately, taking it slow for about four weeks, I threw myself into whatever work was at hand. Speaking at a local homeschool mini conference, planning a surprise party for my husband’s 40th birthday, reaching out to ladies at church, among other things. If having a baby would provide one set of opportunities, not having a baby would open up another. We weren’t sure if we would try again, so in the mean time, I put my hand to the plow and tried not to look back. If this was the door the Lord had open for me, I would walk through it with as much fervor as I had thrown into supporting my pregnancy.

Sometimes it’s hard to know whether we have fresh diligence in our work or if we’re just looking for a distraction from pain. I think it was a mixture of the two for me. I tried to be present with my grief when it came over me, talking it through with my husband, and pouring it out before the Lord. But I also didn’t want to sit in it. Still, it would come on in waves, the triggers taking me by surprise.

Like shopping for clothes for my boys at the big consignment sale event. I didn’t think anything of it most of the time we were there…until we stepped into the room with all the baby gear…the kinds of things I would have been shopping for that day if there was still a baby growing in my womb.

Another trigger hit with a wave of both grief and gratitude.

When I was going through some important papers a couple months after the miscarriage, I came across my youngest son’s birth certificate. I read the words: “Certificate of live birth,” and immediately burst into tears and gave thanks to God. How precious those words were. Because my son is precious, and I can remember how tumultuous his birth was—how I had been monitored for almost ten weeks by a high risk OB with ultrasounds and non-stress tests, how my amniotic fluid levels got to be too low and risk of stillbirth increased, how his heart rate wasn’t great when we went in to induce, how things got better with an IV but eventually got worse and even risky as labor went on, how close we were to an unmedicated emergency C-section, how the doctor coached me to push non-stop-no-breaks until he was out and breathing. “Oh, baby, baby, baby!” That’s how I greeted him when he took his first breath, filled his lungs, and let out his first, sweet cry.

But I had processed all of that before. This time the words hit me with all of that weight and the added weight of a live birth that now could never be. There’s a sinking feeling as I type those words, but my overwhelming takeaway from that moment with my son’s birth certificate in my hands is this: life is precious. It’s a gift. It’s not guaranteed. The fact that I have two amazing sons who are now in their teen years is all of grace, all a gift of God. And I’m thankful.

Fast forward to today. In the midst of a busy end-of-summer, start-of-school, birthday-celebration season for our family, it’s strange to think of how different our current pace would be if I’d been battling an autoimmune disease and late-pregnancy fatigue and had had a baby a week ago (I didn’t expect to reach my due date).

The grief doesn’t rush over me like a wave anymore. It’s more like a sad but distant peak into an alternate life that might have been but isn’t. Our life and our hearts are full, even having been given a taste of another good thing only to have it taken away. God is good.

That’s not a cliché, it’s truth. A truth to cling to in the midst of trials that feel anything but good.

God would be good however it all turned out. The Author of life is the Author of our stories, and we are living in the story He has chosen to write for us–for our good and growth in Christ and for His glory. In so many ways it isn’t what we would have imagined or chosen ourselves. But it is good. He is good.

And that is where my heart can find its comfort and rest.

I hope yours can, too.