Have you ever had a moment in your life that you knew would change you forever? Maybe the day you met your husband or wife, or the day you held your first child. For me, I’ve had a few of these in my life. Most recently the ones that have had the greatest effect on me were the moment I told my husband we had to separate, the day I realized he really was a changed man and that I could see us working it out and the day I found out I was pregnant.
As many of you know we have struggled with infertility for the last few years and after our second round of IUI we found out on December 13, 2012, that I was pregnant. I had waited for that moment for so long and it was finally here, I was going to be a mum. I remember seeing them on that ultrasound screen and my heart was filled with so much joy. From the moment that I saw them, I knew I was changed forever. Little did I know what that meant until last week. Everything had been progressing well. My husband and I had been looking at nursery furniture and strollers and talking about names.
On January 21st I went to see my OB for my 10 wk checkup. The next few minutes will forever be etched in my memory. My Dr said she couldn’t find the heartbeat of one of the babies and in that moment I felt like I had been hit by a tidal wave and my heart just broke. She told me not to worry yet and that she was going to send me for a “formal”, which basically meant that she sent me to an office with a better ultrasound machine. As we drove there I kept trying to be hopeful but I knew in my heart that our baby was gone. The ultrasound tech confirmed it within a couple of minutes. Once again I felt this overwhelming sense of grief and loss, but I knew I had to stay strong and keep going for the other baby. Over the next few days, wept at the loss of our baby, wondering what had happened. I felt like I had been robbed of the joy that this pregnancy was supposed to be. I waited so long for this and now it was always going to have this under current of loss & grief. But even with all those emotions I decided to hold on to hope and be thankful that we still had the other baby.
I was scheduled to see my doctor again a couple of weeks later but I knew I would go crazy waiting till then. I talked to our baby everyday and we prayed for her every night but I knew I needed to see her on the screen and know she was okay. So I made an appointment for someone to come to the house and do an ultrasound.
He arrived on Saturday at around 2:15 pm, set up his equipment and started the ultrasound. Looking back I should have known something was wrong as soon as I saw her on the screen. She wasn’t moving, and there was no visible heartbeat but at the time I guess I didn’t even consider that something would be wrong. And then it happened, the moment that my life changed again and I will never be the same. The ultrasound tech looked at me with sadness in his eyes and said “Baby didn’t make it”. I remember thinking at first that he meant the first twin that we had lost and then I had this sinking realization that he was talking about the other one. I remember just laying there as he explained the reasons this could have happened and feeling completely numb. Someone had just told me my baby was gone and I couldn’t cry or move or do anything I just lay there.
When he was done I went in the other room and called my mum and that’s when it started to sink in. As I said the words “ we lost the other baby” and the reality of what I was saying hit me like a freight train. Everything we had hoped for and prayed for was gone in a moment.
Have you ever felt a pain so strong you think it might kill right there and then? Or a grief so deep that you thought it would consume you where you stand? That’s how I felt as I called my family & friends to let them know the tragic news. Honestly I wanted it to all end, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. Nothing felt worth it anymore, I didn’t know how was I going to go on without them.
Thankfully my mum was already planning to fly in the next day. That morning all I wanted was for 1:30pm to arrive and it couldn’t get here fast enough. Somewhere inside of me I felt like if my mum was here I might just have enough strength to make it through, at the least the next few days. As we arrived at the airport I ran to the arrivals area I just wanted to get to her as fast as I could. When I saw her I just collapsed into her arms and the tears came streaming down my face. Then she kissed my head and looked at me like only a mother could, with knowing, loving eyes and a strength that always amazes me and said “This is not the end, your story doesn’t end here.”
Somehow in that moment although the pain wasn’t any less painful and the grief wasn’t any less deep I knew somehow I was going to be okay. It was like she was echoing the words of my Heavenly Father saying “I know you feel like you can’t go on and there is no light at the end of the tunnel but I’m here and this is not the end of your story.”
Not today, probably not tomorrow or next week or maybe even next month but eventually I knew one day I would be okay. I also realized that I had two choices I could stay where I was and let the grief and pain consume me or could decide to put one foot in foot front of the other and start walking forward. Now those steps might be very small at first but at least I would be moving.
When tragic things happen to us we are left with so many unanswered questions. For me the questions were:-
- Why did this happen?
- Could we have done something different?
- Will it happen again?
- Could I risk facing this pain again?
In most cases the questions will never be answered and the loss combined with the unknown can be so jarring that we almost feel frozen. We think that we can’t possibly move forward.
When pain is so deep and loss so intense we find that there are days when we think that we don’t have strength to get out of bed and to start the day. Even the most simple tasks seem overwhelmingly hard. Those are the days when we need those around us to carry you through. I am thankful every morning to see my husband’s face as he wakes me up with a cup of tea and a kiss and for every little and big thing my mum did while she was here from loads of laundry and trips to Starbucks to allowing me to weep in her arms. I am thankful for text messages, and Facebook posts from friends and family all over the world who are lifting us up in prayer. I am thankful for every person who has brought us a meal or called to check how we are. Some of these things may seem so little and insignificant but each one helps. They are like the tangible hands of Jesus carrying me through the day when I feel like I don’t have the strength.
At first I also thought that if kept living & moving forward then somehow it would be like I was saying that I didn’t miss them or that they weren’t here long enough to have an affect on me. What I have realized though, in even just this short amount of time is that we will never forget the ones we have lost. They are part of us and always will be. I am sure that I will always miss our babies and wish they were here but I want to be a person they would be proud to call their mum and so if only for that I will face the pain and the grief and decide to keep living.
As we allow ourselves to feel the pain and the loss and the acknowledge the fear of the unknown we start to be able to move forward. There are days when my husband and I just weep, we still feel so broken and so lost. But as the fog begins to clear we realize that little by little, we are facing the pain and moving forward, hand in hand, step by step, day by day.
I am forever changed by those two little lives that grew within me for those 10 short weeks. I am their mother and that will never change. Right now my heart is broken but as I give the broken pieces to Jesus and allow him to heal my heart because I know eventually he will put the pieces back together. I will always have a scar and that means I will never be the person I was before but slowly one day at a time I will put one foot in front of the other and I will learn to hope again. Because one thing I am sure of is that my God is always faithful and I can hold onto the fact that my babies are safe in his care and that one day I will see them again.