The Mom Crowd

Thank you so much for all your comments from my post last week.  We are doing well despite the circumstances and I am trying to navigate my way through the grief process.  I’m finding it a little difficult because we are so busy with all of the packing for our move.  I find myself avoiding being alone and I don’t like silent moments.  I think that if this move weren’t hanging over our heads I would want to stay in bed longer.  Usually when I wak up, I find myself evaluating how I’m feeling and then the enormous list of things to accomplish for the day take over and out of bed I go.  

After our experience with our miscarriage last week, I wanted to write a follow up post about it.  My ideas about how I handled the situation may seem a little “earthy-birthy” to some, but I truly believe that many women have the same thoughts about letting their babies go.  I hesitated mentioning my desires about how I wanted to deal with the actual passing of the baby because I thought it might seem weird.  I want women to know that they aren’t alone.  The idea of letting my baby fall into the toilet and flushing it down into the sewer system was too much.  My baby is too precious to me to let it get flushed down the toilet.  I didn’t like the idea of the d&c for the same reason. I know that some medical facilities treat miscarriage tissues with care and offer parents a chance to take it home but most don’t.  Even if my baby was 2.5 inches big he/she was still mine and precious to me.

I woke up on Friday morning with strong contractions.  After an hour I got up and knew that the baby would be coming out.  I had a jar in the bathroom and when I stood up I knew I needed to get to the jar.  I held it between my legs and gave a little push and everything came out into the jar.  I was surprised that when I looked in the jar the baby was right on top.  I felt relief that I was at home when this happened and not out running errands.  I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would have been to deal with that in a public setting.  I called for my husband who was downstairs with the kids.  I showed him the baby and we had a lovely moment together crying, hugging, and mourning the death of our baby. My baby had 10 fingers and toes, eyes, nose, and mouth.  He was precious.  I’m glad that we were able to see the baby–it somehow made the pregnancy more real to me.  I am amazed at how little babies are formed in our wombs.  

We knew that we wanted to have a burial service for the baby sometime that day but I had to deal with all the aftermath of passing the baby.  I had a significant amount of blood loss and we were concerned that we were going to have to go to the ER to get help with the bleeding.  We had talked to some friends who knew about the situation at the moment and had them praying for us.  Thankfully, the heavy bleeding and cramping finally slowed down and I was able to stay at home and rest.  It was a difficult day.  The kids weren’t doing well, my husband was not doing well.  Somehow seeing the baby opened up his daddy heart and he was able to grieve.  Before, he had on his husband hat and was concerned about me and my own physical health.  We decided to postpone the little service for the baby until Saturday morning.  

I decided to bury the baby under my favorite tree in the front yard.  It is a beautiful Japanese Maple tree that I love looking at.  The leaves are purple and red and when the sun shines down on the tree it is just beautiful.  The boys climb on the tree too and I knew that it would be the best place to bury the baby.  My husband read part of the service out of the Book of Common Prayer and we said the Lord’s Prayer together as a family.  It was very simple and just what we needed.  Our boys did well with the service and our 4 year old said on the way back into the house, “Mommy, I hope when we have another baby that it doesn’t die and that it keeps growing.”  Me too, Isaac, me too.  Ewan, the 5 year old, asked again why the baby died.  We tried to answer as best as we can because even we don’t know why.  It was hard to believe that something was wrong with the baby when I saw him/her.  To me, the baby was perfect.  

We decided to name the baby Keeva (phonetic spelling) which is Gailec for “beloved”.  It is a girl’s name but we picked it for the meaning rather than the gender.  I put together a shadow box on Saturday to have a special keepsake for our baby.  A good friend knitted some little baby booties for Keeva and I put those in the box along with the sonogram picture and name.  It felt like we were experiencing some healthy closure.

I talked with a friend of mine who has also had a miscarriage and I was so relieved to know that my desires to bury my baby and not just flush him/her down the toilet were not totally out of the ordinary.  She is a midwife and also knows many other mothers who have had miscarriage who have done similar things that we have (with catching the baby and having a little burial service).  I have only heard one person talk about it though before.  A friend shared with me many years ago that after she had a miscarriage she put the baby in a potted plant for similar reasons.  I think if she had not shared her experience with me so many years ago that I would have felt extremely strange and alone with my desires to catch my baby and bury him/her.  I share my story with you so that you know that you aren’t alone.  You aren’t weird or crazy for wanting to keep your baby nearby.

I realize that not everyone feels the same way I do about this sort of thing, and that is okay.  I don’t want to make anyone feel bad if they didn’t choose to catch the baby and bury it.  I realize that some circumstances don’t allow for that to happen.  I just wanted to ofer my story so that anyone else who has done something similar but is afraid to share it won’t feel alone.  And of course I want everyone to know that there are options out there for how to deal with a miscarriage.    

Next week, I promise I’ll write about something else–thanks for listening to my story. I hope that someone finds hope and encouragement through it.