A reader writes:
My wife and I recently had a miscarriage after our first attempt at pregnancy. We're both Christians but don't use Christian-y language to explain away things. On the day that it happened, my brain was parsing out the biological from the logical. We humans are so quick to assign meaning to everything. I think it helps us cope with the highly emotional and illogical. We think: I am a good person = nothing bad should happen to me. Except, some things just … are. A terminated embryo can be just as cold as a mismatch of genetic material. No soul tormented to death. No cosmic master plan of torture for good creatures. Just human biology in all of its terrible agony.
Another writes:
About six years ago, after having one healthy boy a few years earlier, my wife and I were expecting baby #2.
The first time around was very easy. Not a lot of effort to get pregnant. Baby #2 was the same way. First try. And we figured it was smooth sailing from there. Just about a week after we told everyone that we were expecting again, the pregnancy was in jeopardy. Why, we will never know, but in the end, my wife had a D&C. The hospital we used is Catholic (we are ex-Catholics, now Episcopalians) and they had a nun come speak to us about our feelings and burial arrangements.
That last part was weird for us. We just wanted it to be over and to move on. Yet the hospital insisted that the fetus be buried. We could handle it ourselves or it could be buried on the hospital grounds where others were buried. This really freaked me out. I am pro-choice and to me, it seemed silly.
But I must say, after having two more children, I still think of that fourth child that we lost from time to time. And this post brought it all back. I feel a sense of loss today that back then, I never thought I would experience. Strange, this thing called life.
Another:
Thanks for posting this. My wife and I have been dealing with the same struggle in our faith community. How do we make sense of miscarriage? And how do we love others who don't have the slightest clue how to love and care for us? For that matter, how do others love and care for us? How do I love my wife, for whom miscarriage is a physical reality, while for me the whole thing feels removed?
I do want to mention a great resource, a new book by a Methodist minister who had a miscarriage early in her marriage – What Was Lost, by Elise Erikson Barrett. It's a theological reflection on miscarriage that calls us into community to deal with miscarriage. It's been helpful for us.
The Dish 