Tomorrow will mark six years since my second baby’s death inside my womb at exactly eight weeks and six days old.  It was my first experience of grief on a visceral level.  Before that baby’s death (who, in my head, I think of as a boy named Solomon), I had known the death of two grandfathers – one of whom I was quite close to, but who had also lived a long and full life by the time he died – and one childhood dog.  Those losses were significant in their own way, of course, but they didn’t topple me, cut me down at the knees, emotionally speaking.  But the miscarriage of a much-wanted and already-loved baby inside of me was brutal in a way no other grief before that had been. 

And, though infertility and pregnancy losses at all stages are becoming more talked-about and less taboo these days,[i] there’s still quite a lot that nobody tells you about when these things happen.

For example, no one tells you that once a miscarriage is discovered, the options you have are either A) terrible and awful and horrific or B) just about equally terrible and awful and horrific.  So, if you’re early enough on in the pregnancy, you can either A) “let nature take its course” and wait for your womb to eject the dead fetus via a lot of bleeding at a time you have no control over or B) elect to have a D&C done where you will be put under while a doctor inserts a tool into your uterus and scrapes away everything there – dead fetus, forming placenta, etc., etc. – and when you wake up you will feel nauseous, in pain, and horribly empty.

My miscarried baby was discovered during my 9-week appointment to get my first ultrasound imaging done.  For those of you unaware of these things, that first ultrasound doesn’t take place, as often is portrayed in films and television, with the ultrasound tech squirting solution on the tummy but rather with the doctor or midwife inserting a wand into the uterus through the vagina.  So, it’s not the most comfortable or modest position to be in. 

Being somewhat naïve about these things, since my first pregnancy was pretty easy and uncomplicated – until I went into labor – I went to my first ultrasound appointment by myself, without Ben.  The doctor who was performing the ultrasound was a resident and the room I was in had a big screen (in my memory, it seems huge to me – 5 or so feet wide – but surely that can’t be possible?) where the mom-to-be could see exactly what the doctor was seeing in real time. 

Because I had already been through this process once, I knew that one of the first things you notice in this first ultrasound is that little beating heart-like thing in the baby’s chest.  It moves, pumping, on the black-and-white screen when little else in the picture moves.  When the baby first appeared on the screen, I could see his face in silhouette right away.  He had a perfectly round head, a perfectly formed nose.  And I looked for that moving heartbeat.  The doctor, I knew, was looking, too.  For a few moments, he searched and searched, moving the wand inside of me.  And then, his supervising doctor told him to step aside and the supervisor came instead, and tried moving the wand about, too. 

Then, he said: “This is hard.  This is going to be really difficult.”

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  But I already knew the answer. 

The doctor outlined my options (see above) and suggested that I go for (B), the D&C, since the baby was already measuring almost nine weeks along.  I had to get dressed, of course, and ask a whole lot of questions, most of which I did pretty calmly.  But what I remember most – really the only thing I remember – is seeing that one image of my sweet, precious child on that huge screen for the first and last and only time.

By the time I got out of the office and called Ben, I was a disaster, sobbing and snotty.  Ben (as naïve going into it all as I had been) was playing soccer at the time and so didn’t get my phone calls or my messages until an hour later.  By then, I was already nearly home, thanks to the angelic ministrations of a dear friend, Suzanne, who drove me the hour back from Chattanooga in my car and whose husband Gene followed behind us so that he could drive Suzanne home again.

In Mark’s version of the Gospel story, Jesus is pushed by God’s Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days and forty nights he is tempted by evil.  We know from other gospels that he was likely fasting during this time.  Mark isn’t quite so expansive about the scene.  All Mark’s gospel says is this: “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” (Mark 1:13). 

It must have seemed like a vast and empty time for Jesus.  All that hunger, all those questions, all that facing into darkness and loneliness, the self-doubt and the desperation.  In its way, it was a precursor, a little foretaste of the cross, when all those questions must have come hurtling back to him.  But, Mark’s gospel also points out that throughout that time in the wilderness, angels waited on Jesus.  The Greek is more explicit; they served him, or ministered unto him. 

And I think of those angels when I reflect on the wilderness time that my miscarriage ushered into being.  Throughout the grief and the confusion and the heartbreak, there were angels abounding.  Suzanne and Gene got me back home that day and then, some months later, when I found out I was once again pregnant, they said prayers with Ben and me to both mourn the life that was never born and celebrate the new life even now growing within me.  My doctor at the time who performed the D&C provided the most pastoral and loving care I have ever experienced.  She walked me through the horror of that process with kindness and compassion.  My father-in-law, who happened to be staying with us when it all happened, seemed intuitively to know just how and when to make himself scarce and just what to say when the time was right.  The event of my miscarriage spurred me towards finally finding a therapist and I found a woman who would end up keeping me sane through some even darker days to come.  The resident doctor who discovered the miscarriage ended up, by some providential coincidence, delivering my daughter Beatrice about a year later.  I didn’t even remember him, but when he came into the delivery room and introduced himself to me, he said, “You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you from about a year ago?  And I’m so very happy to be here helping you now.”  And, of course, there was Ben, who, it turns out, grieves very differently from me, but who was adamantly by my side throughout it all. 

And then, a few years later, there was a moment of sad but hugely profound redemption, in its own way.  In my parents’ house, I stood and watched as my father sat down and, with my mother’s help, started to get settled into what would very soon become his death bed.  He was weak and ailing but his mind, for now, was still agile.  We were talking about his death and I think I asked him if he was scared.  And he said “scared” wasn’t quite the right term for it, but that there was so much that was unknown, so much that he just couldn’t fathom.  And I told him: “Well whatever it is, and whatever it is like, remember that I have a child with God.  And so when you get there, find my baby, and love him for me.”

And my father looked up at me with wide eyes.  “I had forgotten that,” he said.  “Yes,” he said.  “Yes, I’ll do that.”  And it was like my baby’s death gave my father purpose after life, a purpose he hadn’t even known he was yearning for, a purpose that gave him comfort in the very end. 

In Mark’s gospel, the only thing that signifies Jesus’ resurrection is the emptiness of the tomb.  It is the emptiness that tells the good news, that opens our eyes to the possibility of new life, if we can but come to believe it. 

Empty Tomb

[i] Which is good, because statistics now show that one in four recognized pregnancies result in miscarriage.  That means one-quarter of all pregnancies will not result in a live birth.  And that doesn’t even take into consideration women who struggle with infertility – getting pregnant in the first place – and stillborn births of babies who have developed healthily inside the womb past the 24-week mark.  These are staggering statistics, I think, and remind us how little we know each other’s suffering…