The popular and personal thread continues:
My wife and I had been married for about six months before we found out we were expecting. We were so thrilled that we immediately told family, friends, and announced it on social media. We started reading as much information as we could and I started looking online for baby clothes with my favorite sports teams’ logos on them. I was already a proud father. We are religious, and the night we found out I put my hands on my wife’s stomach and we prayed that our baby would be healthy and we’d be good parents.
Five weeks later my wife started bleeding, and the next day she miscarried in the bathroom of our apartment. Later the doctor told us it was too early to have even been a baby and we must have just seen the egg sac, but I’ll never forget my wife’s hysterical screaming and sobbing as we saw what looked to us like a tiny baby-shaped thing. I somehow made it to our couch and broke down sobbing because it hit me that I would never teach our child how to play basketball.
A couple hours later we drove in shock to a nearby park and buried our future plans and hopes in the woods. I said a few words through my tears, never expecting I’d have to bury my own child before it was even a child.
Another reader:
This thread took me back to a dark day nearly 30 years ago. I remember so clearly sitting on my living room sofa with an extra-big maxi pad on, while the remains of what would have been my first child lumpily left my body. Then I went on to have two children and, while I grieved the one I lost, I can’t imagine having any other children than the ones I have. I know intellectually that I would have loved that one as much as I love these two adults who have been a part of my life all these years, but my emotions won’t follow my brain there. I just feel as though these particular people were the ones given to me to love. This sounds ridiculous, I know, but I feel as though I would have grieved not knowing them.
Another:
About seven years ago my wife woke me with a piercing scream. I ran into the bathroom to find her holding a pregnancy test and crying tears of joy. The child we had been trying for years to conceive was finally coming.
Those were some happy months – possibly the happiest in my entire life. That happiness ended in a pediatric cardiologist’s office as my wife and I sat together, holding hands, listening to the doctor explain how our son had a major heart defect that he would not survive. Just one of those things. Nobody’s fault. It just happens and no one knows why.
Abortion was an option on the table, but one we quickly discarded. Our son was too wanted, too loved. We decided to give him what life we could.
The time leading up to his birth is a painful blur. My memories of my wife’s labor is a series of disjointed, painful images. My son’s life stands in sharp contrast to all of that. I remember every moment, every breath he took, how it felt to hold him, the way the world shifted when he died in my arms. The next day we went to the mortuary, gave him a teddy bear and my childhood blanket, watched the flames consume his mortal shell, then finally took him home.
I still can’t drive by the crematorium without crying.
The grief nearly destroyed our marriage, but we survived and now have two other children. Our four-year-old son knows he had a brother and likes to talk to him – which both breaks and warms my heart. Our 18-month-old daughter owes her life to her oldest brother, as it was his condition that convinced a doctor to run the test which discovered her heart defect before it had a chance to do any damage. I like to think my son sacrificed his life to give my daughter a chance to live hers, which helps with the pain somewhat.
We were also fortunate in that we heard of the services of Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep before my oldest son was born. We have a complete picture record of every moment of his life thanks to a photographer who met the darkest moment of our lives with grace, dignity and overwhelming compassion. We are finally at a point in our grief where we can have pictures of all of our children on the walls and I am profoundly grateful that we have something we can show our other children and say “this is your brother”.
Still, I would give everything I have to hold my first-born in my arms one more time.
Another:
I expect you’ll get an outpouring of stories on the topic of miscarriage and stillbirth. It’s a painful experience and one that is often easier to talk about anonymously. I had just read Ariel Levy’s article, barely held back tears all the way through, then after a short walk to clear my head opened up your site and there it was again. Ms. Levy’s account was heartbreaking for me to read since I’ve endured three miscarriages of my own. None were anywhere near this level of drama, but I could still relate and my heart is heavy for her and her child.
Since mine were early miscarriages, sometimes it feels like they don’t count. I had no ultrasound photos, never heard a heartbeat, didn’t even take a photo of my positive tests. No one besides my husband and my doctor knew I was pregnant or even considering it. I lived with a huge weight for three years. (And, even if you do want to share, it’s a little hard to just bring up in conversation.)
When I got pregnant again, for a fourth time, I was terrified. I did not truly believe I would carry this child full term until all of a sudden I held him in my arms. It was only after the birth of my son that I’ve been able to more freely talk about my experiences, because I feel like I’m safely on the other side. Other side of what? I don’t know. A terrible rite of passage maybe.
Those “babies” (mushy bunch of cells, really) were as real to me though as my lively 17-month-old son is now. I was briefly a mother, and then suddenly I wasn’t. (Then again, and again.) I think about them often, though less than I used to (the mind of a working mom of a toddler is full enough). What I wonder the most is who they might have been. Would one of them have been just like my son, but three years older? Would they have had his eyes, his voice, his belly laugh? Or, if the first one had worked out would we have stopped then – in which case, perhaps I would never have met my son?
Gradually the pain has faded and changed into … something else. A deepening perhaps. Motherhood has been a revelation to me. I feel like a hazy curtain has been pulled back and I’ve been tugged across an invisible line, for better or worse and there’s no turning back. Experiencing those losses is part of that journey and I am actually thankful now for having gone through them. Would I feel the same if I didn’t have my son today? If I was still without a child? I can’t say.
Since you’re a poetry guy, I would like to pass along one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:
The Uses of Sorrow
(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.
The Dish 