When Little Souls Leave Too Soon

It was many many years ago.  And, it was yesterday. The 1st  day of the 4th month of a dreamed of pregnancy, when I woke at 3AM and knew something was wrong. A sharp sudden pain had woken me, and then the all too familiar wet warmth between my legs.

Somehow, even in the reality of the moments to follow I held onto some strand of hope that what was clearly happening, wasn't really happening. Couldn't be happening. Not again.

An hour later, in the emergency room, the agony that echoed off the walls, those  cries that emanated from some primal place in my soul, told the whole truth.    Our baby had died.  And no drug, no amount of comforting from loved ones, nothing, could stop the pain.

And, I knew, for one reason only, that we were luckier than many.  We had a  healthy 9 year old daughter who was just waking up at her other dad's house when my husband called her from the wall phone in the emergency room. It was a turning point for me, realizing  that she too had lost this baby. She had been so excited when we told her I was pregnant. She was the perfect age to be a big sister. She had shared in our joy and now she would be forced to share the pain. But in those first hours and the days to follow, I wasn't even able to understand that my husband Greg had suffered a loss that morning. I felt so utterly alone in the grief, I thought I might die.

Just as certain as I am that no one can ever truly know my experience in that moment, I understand and accept that neither will I, ever, truly know theirs. 

When a baby dies, there is a ripple effect that circles the globe. Almost as though it is somehow shared by every woman everywhere who has ever known the same thing. That is what saved me. That is what pulled me back from the depth of a darkness that was too frightening and indescribable; the understanding that I was not alone. Alone, perhaps, in my personal experience of it, but not alone in the loss. So many people had shared in the celebration of our pregnancy that there were now that many people to help bear the burden of our loss.

Sadly, that is not always the case. A miscarriage suffered by women or couples who have kept their pregnancies a secret can leave individuals wandering in the wasteland of grief, all alone. I know there are reasons people choose to do that, and I honor those reasons. For me, had I not had the village I had, I don't know what I would have done.

I can't say what men feel in times like these; I know for my husband, lost was a word he used. Lost in the wilderness of grief but but also lost, period. Not knowing how to help me.  And I have to admit that I needed to be helped. It was so many years ago that I don't remember, at the time, if I was even able to acknowledged his loss in this. I hope so.       

There are as many different scenarios with infant loss as there are with every other kind of loss. Every single person who has been there, carries the grief of their experience. It is always unique because of the story behind it, but it is not unique because it happened. I was still teaching at the Montessori school when this happened and I will always remember the kind wise words of a mom of one of the toddlers. She said that this baby had come to us because it needed all that love, all the love Greg and Shelby and I had poured towards who he or she would be and now that Spirit needed to go be born into someone else's life. Not everyone would be comforted by those words but I was. Because I knew, that the Spirit of that child could not have been more loved. 

So here is what I need to say now, to every woman who has suffered in the loss of a pregnancy....

Please don't forget them; the babies that die. They came to your life for whatever time you had them and your life changed because of them. Maybe you never got to hold them; see them; hear their sounds or breathe in the fragrance of their being, but they were a part of you. You will carry the memory of them for as long as you live. And if you did hold them, breathe them in, suckle them, bathe them, laugh with them and comfort them, before they vanished from your life,  you will carry those memories too, for as long as you live.

The pain of infant loss has been under appreciated in our world, and the women who grieve in infant loss have been underserved. If you are one of these women, may your heart be blessed with having known your child for whatever time you had them; and may you find the courage and strength to rebuild, reconcile and recalibrate in your hope to eventually step back into the light....the light of living life with joy and love.