Lily's Story - Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness

We are so glad you are here. This episode is going to be a little bit different than usual. Every once in a while, we like to tackle a serious subject. Today, we are going to talk about something that is very near dear to our hearts. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month and October 16th also happens to be our daughter, Lily’s, 17th heavenly birthday.

We realize this is a very sensitive subject, but we also feel like telling Lily’s story can be helpful, and start the journey to healing, for some, who like we did at the time… feel like they are trying to navigate that road alone.

We are Paul & Candy. Welcome to our podcast where we encourage you to look for opportunities in your life to see a beautiful view. Sit back and relax!

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Transcript

Lily’s Story

Welcome to our podcast, where we encourage you to look for opportunities in your life to see a beautiful view. I'm Candy.

And I'm Paul. Today, we're going to be talking about a very sensitive subject that's very near and dear to our hearts. We're going to share our story of pregnancy and infant loss.

Yeah, this episode is going to be a little bit different from our usual. Yes, we want to be upfront about the subject and we understand that subjects like this can be a trigger for some people. But we also know that there is power in sharing a story and we hope that our story will help others who are facing similar situations.

Yes it can.

So, sit back, relax, and let's find the beautiful view together.

Welcome to the Beautiful View podcast. We are so glad that you're here. As we mentioned earlier, this episode is going to be a little different than usual every once in a while, we like to throw in a a really serious subject, something that matters to us. So today we are going to talk about.

Yes, we are.

Something that is very near and dear to our hearts. October is pregnancy and infant Loss Awareness Month and the 16th of October also happens to be our daughter, Lily's 17th Heavenly Birthday.

We realize this is a very sensitive subject, but we also feel like telling Lily's story can be helpful and start the journey to healing for some who, like we did at the time, feel like they're trying to navigate that road alone.

This time of year is always really bittersweet for us, as much as we love the changing seasons, the beautiful fall colors, the cooler temperatures. All of that, there's always a little bit of heartache that lingers this time of year. We've never told our story like this before. I've blogged about it, but we have never recorded it in audio or video form. So, we're really hopeful that this goes well and comes over well.

Yes.

Yeah, it's it. It really touches deep and even just reading over like our notes for the episode is hard.

It’s hard to go back and relive that time in our lives.

But if our story helps just one person out there who is facing similar circumstances, yeah. Then it's certainly worth sharing.

Oh, yes, absolutely. So that is our hope. Did you know that one out of every four pregnancies ends in miscarriage?

I didn't know that when I miscarried in May of 2006, at 9 weeks. At that point I had had a perfectly healthy baby with zero issues. This was baby #2 why would I miscarry my second child? I thought something was seriously wrong with me.

Our doctor told us sometimes these things just happen, and that was true, but it didn't make it any easier.

No, it didn't. As soon as we received the OK to try again, we were pregnant with baby Lily. This time we got through the 1st trimester with flying colors. I had very little morning sickness. It was it was a really, really great pregnancy up to that point. And it wasn't until the 20-week check-up that the ultrasound showed an abnormality.

It's going well. When you go for the ultrasound, it's a time that is kind of exciting. Like you go to it and you're like, we're going to see our baby and.

That's, you know, so it, that's what it should be. And so that's certainly the way that that we that we entered into that appointment.

Yeah, absolutely.

But then the tech who was doing the ultrasound was like hmm. And then she just kind of kept looking. And then she said, I think we're gonna need to go back and see the doctor. So she took us back to our sweet doctor.

And she sat down with us, and she gently told us what they had seen, which was that it looked like her diaphragm was not developing correctly. Yeah, at that point, they diagnosed her with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. And that was there was no answer to what caused it was again one of those things where you, you know, the doctors tell you, the medical professionals tell you sometimes these things just happen.

After that I was sent to specialty doctors who tested for other abnormalities. They did an amniocentesis and, you know, tried to figure out if there were any other congenital issues. But I mean, as far as they could tell, the herniated diaphragm was the biggest problem. Everything else was kind of secondary. But unfortunately, it meant that her other organs.

Her lungs, her heart, etc, would not. Likely were would not form correctly. Doctors gave her a 5050 chance of life after birth, so we did the only thing we knew.

Yes.

To do.

We prayed. Yeah, you carried her full term, which was great because she was the safest in the womb and had the best chance. The longer she stayed there. You were supplying the oxygen that she needed in her blood supply. So, all was well.

As you can imagine, I was a basket case, and I was doing my best to trust the Lord for his plan and his purpose in all of this. On October 16th, 2007, she made her appearance into this world at Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth, TX. It was the best place. For her to be, because it was right next door to Cook Children's Hospital and that's where they were hopefully going to be able to perform a lifesaving surgery on her after. Birth.

It was a very quick birth. You were determined to bring her into this world as quickly as possible, and right after you gave birth, I followed as they whisked Lily away from Harris Methodist across the bridge to Cook Children's Hospital, where a medical team was ready to receive her. It was just so hard to leave you behind.

And you know, though she was born full term, she was born just 10 days earlier than her due date. She had the absolute best care at the Children's Hospital. Our precious baby spent her entire 13 days of life hooked up on ECMO. Life support waiting a surgery that she was too sick for.

She just couldn't get strong enough to handle the surgery. Her lungs were underdeveloped, and as it turned out, she had a congenital heart defect as well. She was the biggest baby in the NICU, weighing in at 8 lbs. She looked huge compared to those tiny little creamy babies.

As she was. Tiny, tiny little ones. The surgery that we were hoping she would eventually be well enough to receive was actually relatively minor. They would close the hole in her diaphragm and make sure everything was where it should be. Lily would have a hard time through her life, but the hope was that she would be able to get to a point.

Where she could breathe well enough on her own. The problem was that she needed to be healthy enough to go through the surgery and so she needed to be able to sustain a reasonable O2 level in her blood without life support, and she never got that.

Far, no. I was broken in the early morning hours of October 29th, 2007. Her fragile little body just couldn't take anymore and she was gone.

We had a room at the Ronald McDonald House next to the hospital and early in the morning we were called to get there as soon as possible because Lily wasn't doing good. We got there to find that they were performing CPR on her tiny body, the nurse in charge was looking at me to tell them what to do and the look said everything I needed to know. I could see that she wasn't recovering, so I simply said that's enough. It's OK. Thank you. And she slipped away from us. For the first time we sat there and held our baby. I was completely numb. There's simply nothing you can do to prepare for that moment, and I don't believe there's any way to know how to react properly.

No, we left the hospital with empty arms and empty car seat in the back seat of. The car with. Severely broken hearts. I got home to a fully assembled baby bed I wouldn't be using. Baby clothes that were no longer needed and I couldn't bring myself to pack them away. I wasn't sure I would ever recover from such a tragic situation. I went through every single stage of grief. There were days I couldn't get out of bed. There were days I was in complete denial. The whole thing just felt like a huge nightmare that I just wanted to wake up for him. I didn't want anyone around me, but at the same time, I didn't want to be by myself. I was just a mess. I completely broken mess.

Paul didn't know what to do with me. He just basically threw himself into work as I grieved because he just didn't know what to do for me.

Well, there's really nothing that I could do to make the situation any better. The only thing that I knew, and it was really some kind of artificial default, a bad habit that I'd learned over the years from the guys that I worked with, was to just keep going as if nothing had happened. I had worked alongside pastors who were going through sickness, family issues or loss and were back behind the pulpit the next weekend prey. I had one pass to once. Tell me don't call in crawl in. I thought it was the brave and the right thing to do to just continue to work as hard as I could, give myself to something worthwhile and drive through the pain. Of course I was wrong about that.

I was presented with options that were designed to sidetrack me from my grief, my family and my wife, and my biggest regret was that I was not there for you. The great comfort was that we had such a supportive community as you said. I mean, we just really had some great friends around us. They reached out, they brought food.

Cards, gifts, and I know that there were so many people who were praying for us. We felt very, very loved.

Yes, absolutely.

In my mind though, I should just accept what happened, because God's in control, right? You know, so many people have said to me, you are so strong, you know, God never gives us more than we can handle. Can I just say I hate that phrase? I couldn't handle it. There are some days I still can't handle it.

Even 17 years later.

Yeah, I know, I know they meant well and even meant it as a compliment to me, but it just isn't true. I couldn't handle going to the church where we had her funeral service.

Nope.

Where Paul was also on staff. I couldn't handle it in the parking lot when I saw a new mom getting her baby out of her car seat. I couldn't handle it at the grocery store when the very innocent cashier asked me how my day was going, I couldn't handle it. When my at the time 4 year old daughter Emily asked me why her baby sister had to die.

There is nothing in life that prepares you for that kind of thing. Nothing.

No.

I know that you process things differently than I do, so how do you feel like that period of time affected you? What were some of the things that you struggled with?

Well, after you let me know that we couldn't go back to a building that just reminded you of our loss. I found something that as a guy I could fix. I could fix this issue, so I applied for a job at a larger church in a neighboring city. A job that would take more of my time and would emphasize my technical abilities rather than my pastoral abilities. I just didn't think that there could be a future for me in ministry after my faith had been so fundamentally challenged. Lights, cameras. Production. I could do that. I could do that without having to deal with my faith. I was good at that. If something didn't work, I could fix it. I couldn't fix my heart. I couldn't fix my wife's heart or my children's hearts. But I could fix this.

I know many people have experienced something similar to this. I didn't necessarily know that at the time because it just wasn't talked about right. Miscarriage, still birth, infant loss. In my mind, those were things that happened like once in a blue moon to someone I didn't know. I just felt so alone. Depression and anxiety overwhelmed me. We lived out of town, away from family. It was so hard. I spent a lot of time doing things that helped me process the whole situation.

I scrap booked about her. I journaled my thoughts, my feelings, and my prayers. All of those things were helpful to me, but gosh, it was so hard.

As a dad, I bear responsibility for my family. Losing a child just makes you feel so, so helpless. What more could I have done? I'm supposed to try everything and we really did. We had the best help that there was available to us, but it just wasn't enough. Accepting that some very serious things are simply outside of our control was the hardest thing.

And to know that as a man of faith, I was supposed to trust God for those things, and that it didn't result in her recovering was so tough too.

And I felt guilty for not being stronger for my family. I felt guilty for falling apart on unsuspecting people. I felt guilty for being angry. My faith was so big, I served the Lord faithfully. I lived my life for him.

What did I ever do to deserve this? Why did this happen to me? Well, we are about to celebrate Lilys 17th Heavenly birthday this month, and I still don't fully know the answers to those questions, but here are some things that we do know.

Yes. First of all, life isn't always fair. We live in a broken world. We know that our God is sovereign and our faith is big.

Yes.

We had numerous opportunities to share our story with other herding parents after this happened to us.

We treasure our children even more than we did before. Time does help, but the hurt never goes away.

Yeah.

It's still hard sometimes to answer the how many children do you have? Question. I was asked this just the other day. And I answered 4. I should have answered 5 and I didn't, and I don't know why. Yeah.

It's also OK to ask for help, sometimes admitting that you're not strong enough. Mm-hmm is the best path to recovery.

Yeah.

To remember that God never gives us more than he can handle, not what we can handle, but more than he can handle. He is there for us, and that life is precious and our time with our loved ones is a gift from him. This world is not our home.

Right. It took me years to get past the anxiety attacks that followed the experience of losing my baby. I was on and off a low dosage anxiety medication for years. I hate to depend on medication to make me OK, but I'm also so grateful for it. At the same time, there was a time that I couldn't be in public.

Without having an anxiety attack and breaking out in hives.

Up till very recently.

Yeah, I I sometimes still do. I would not be surprised I put off talking to my doctor about it for way too long. Umm. I didn't want to appear to be weak because I was supposed to be a living testimony of faith, hope and all of that. When I finally told her what was happening at one of my annual appointments, I broke out in hives when I was telling her that I had been. Breaking out in hives.

It's just.

And she was so kind to the way she handled it and.

She's like, yes, I can. See that?

Yeah, well, that's apparent. I just will forever be grateful to her for the way that she handled that whole situation.

He is a wonderful doctor and a wonderful person.

Yes.

I was also on medication for anxiety and depression for a long, long time. When we started full time, our being, we were so relieved that we didn't have to be around people all at the time. That was one of the attractive things for us. At least we didn't have to appear like we had it all together. If sometimes we didn't. Mm-hmm. The anonymity that our being provides, if you want it is almost total. You're in new places all the time.

Yes.

And no one knows you.

Yeah, I didn't have to worry about breaking out in hives during the meeting at church or any other place. It was such a freeing experience. Since what started out as a hiding experience turned into a healing experience, it allowed me time and space to heal in a healthy environment.

It did.

I needed time to be OK, to draw closer to my savior, to learn to rest in his embrace again, and trust him again, and to learn to walk by faith in every aspect of my life.

Yes, that time was also good for me. I know that's when we began to read through the Bible over and over again. Get back to the source and and and find out what we actually believed. Yeah.

And it's interesting to me that during that time of our being and travelling around the country that we've come across so many people that have been in similar situations to us, whether that was in full time ministry or infant loss, those those situations have occurred over and over again.

Yeah.

I thought that it would be easy for us to just drive off into the sunset and live the rest of our days on the road, but when it actually came to it, I had a really hard time leaving the area that we lived in. We gradually took trips further away, but the furthest we made it that first couple of years was to Ohio for the summer, where my friends ran a youth camp, which was that was ideal because we were going somewhere where we knew people. Mm-hmm. And they gave us a safe place to be, and we'll we'll forever be grateful for that.

So we helped out there at the youth camp.

Yeah.

But it wasn't until the second year of being there that when our time came to leave, we finally had. I finally had the courage to get behind the steering wheel of our truck and just go and that's when we headed for the West. Coast. We were both pretty messed up emotionally. And mentally, for quite a while, and I would say that we still bear some scars from that whole experience even now.

Sure, I remember a major milestone in our journey that we that where we both felt like we turned a corner. It was 2018.

We had both been off of medication for a while at that point, and we tended a local farm to table event in our now home of Bellevue, IA.

We knew no one here at that time. We knew the dinner would be served family style at round tables and we would be sitting with people that we didn't know, but they were probably going to talk to us and they very quickly would pick up on our accents and realize that we were not from around here.

We do. Yes.

These are foreigners!

Yeah. So we felt a little out of place and a little nervous, I would say.

Yeah. Oh, yes. Nervously excited, though, yeah.

Nervously excited, so we we. But we were determined that we were going to go through with it. Yeah.

Yeah. Our conversations beforehand were about what we should wear and how we wanted to get there, and plenty of time to get a seat, but not too early so that it would be awkward and just all of those kinds of things. I remember that like, nervous side and feeling.

Yes. Rights. And we're both somewhat foodies. And so that was getting us excited. Like what the menu was gonna be. And I told you to pick our table because I didn't want to be responsible yet again for picking the wrong table like I usually do. And and.

You did well.

Thank you. We really had the absolute best time. We made new friends, we enjoyed the delicious food and drinks and.

Yes, you did.

I didn't even break out in hives. Hallelujah.

In this episode, we wanted to share our story and our hearts, but we also wanted to encourage you. If you are walking through a tough time or if you have walked through a tough time in the recent past. Mental health is often a tough subject. Yeah, and it's even sometimes frowned upon, especially in Christian circles. Sometimes life deals us some really crappy circumstances for want of.

Yes.

A better word. Even for people who love the Lord with all their heart, soul and mind, sometimes bad things happen and the healing process just takes time.

Yeah, no matter what circumstances we find ourselves faced with, there are three promises that you can cling to, all of which were crucial to my healing. And continue to be.

Yes.

Number one is you are not alone and God has not left you.

The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you. He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed from Deuteronomy 31, verse 8.

And one of my favorite scriptures that I've clung to so many Times Now is found in Psalm 3418. The Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

The second promise is this. You can come to him because God is well acquainted with grief.

Yes. Come to me. All you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 1128 through 30.

And in first Peter 5, verse 7 cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

The third promise is he works all things for the good.

MHM. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8, verse 28.

And in Psalm 145, verses 13 and 14 it says the Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord upholds all who are failing and raises up all who are bowed down.

As we do every year, we will celebrate lilies, life on her birthday. We will celebrate the life she lived, the life she touched, the growth, the victories. And the hope that we have of our eternal life through Jesus Christ, yes.

My guess is that this subject was placed on our hearts to share because someone else needed it. Today, someone who is in the trenches of their own grief or heartache.

Yes.

So, if that's. You know that you are not alone. You have permission to grieve. You don't have to hold it together and prayer.

You're not.

Is your greatest. Cool journal. Give yourself a little time and space to heal. Talk to your doctor if you need to.

And as always, you can e-mail us at beautifulviewpod@gmail.com. Though we can't offer professional advice, we would be happy to lift you up in prayer or be a listening ear. Yeah, if you have listened this far and are not walking through a season like this right now, remember to be kind to people you never know what they're going through.

Yeah. I have learned to look at our life experience as a calling. I know that sounds crazy, but I read something the other day on Facebook that I want to share with you that fits this exact sentiment. It was written by a lady named Hannah Williamson and I think she has a YouTube channel?

Yeah.

Or something that.

It says. Your calling is going to crush you if you are called to mend the broken hearted you are going to wrestle with a broken heart. If you are called to heal God's little ones, you're going to experience your own share of trauma. If you are called at all to the lost and broken of this world, the throwaways to preach and teach the gospel. You will be sifted for the wisdom that anoints your message if you are called to empower yourself, esteem will be attacked. Your success is hard for. Your calling will come with spiritual warfare and a sifting. Both are necessary for your mantle to be authentic, humble, and powerful. You're crushing won't be easy because your assignment is not easy and you can't minister powerfully. What you haven't walked out. Listen to that sentence again. You're crushing won't be easy because your assignment is not easy and you can't minister powerfully. What you haven't walked out when you're feeling the weight of it coming down on you run to the father who longs to be your comfort. Let him whisper your true identity over you while resting under the shadow of his wings. Position yourself against his heartbeat. Let him renew your strength and set your eyes forward.

Wow, that's so powerful. Yeah. There's something special about being able to empathize with someone because you've experienced what they're going through.

Yeah, we say it all the time. Life isn't always easy. It definitely throws us some curveballs. Sometimes when we go through hard times, it can be really difficult sometimes to see the beautiful view.

No, it's not. Yeah.

But. Even when life seems really hard and dark, if you can find a little spark of light and try to think of three things every day that you're grateful for, it's not magic. It's not an instant fix, but eventually, eventually you will begin to see the beautiful views. Again, there's a little saying that I read the other day that I thought kind of fit this and it says no olives, no oil, no grapes, no wine. Your oil is not cheap, my friend.

Your experiences and your story have the power to help or encourage someone else who is walking through that similar valley. We all have a calling that's bigger than ourselves.

Yes.

If we look at the hard things we face in life as preparation for Our Calling, it makes the beautiful views a little easier. To find.

Yeah.

Thank you for joining us today. We hope that you've been encouraged today even though this is a really hard topic. We pray that sharing our story with you either helps you feel less alone in what you're going through or it makes you more sympathetic to what others are going through. What are we going to talk about next time?

Well, we hosted a group of seminary students in our home a few weeks back and they asked us a question that has kind of hung with us for the last several weeks. They asked us, is this place sacred?

Yes, that was great.

Yeah.

So we're going to call our next episode a sacred place. We're going to talk about what that means and why it's important.

And it's going to be a great topic to talk about. I can't wait to. Dig into it.

Yeah.

And while we prepare to bring you that episode, maybe go back and listen to one of our previous episodes. We've gotten ourselves into some real Pickles while we were traveling on the road. I was like, there's a parking lot there and I just dove for it. So we hit the slope going into the parking lot and the truck didn't have enough juice to get up the that up that hill. Yeah. And we were stuck.

So it was a Friday evening. And all the locals were headed to the high school playoff football game in town. And they were all having to navigate around to the back of our rig that was stuck in the road. So on that really busy Rd.

We just couldn't move, couldn't move backwards because we were dug into the driveway, couldn't move forward.

There was no way we could make it around the corner, so I looked up the local non-emergency number for the Police Department.

They sent out a very nice, very calm police officer to help us out of this pickle.

Mm-hmm.

So take a trip with us if you dare. In the episode entitled Bloopers and Pickles In Your podcast Feed or The Beautiful View YouTube channel. If you know of someone who would enjoy this podcast, please point them in our direction. Visit us at Beautiful View Podcast on Facebook or Instagram. Share our posts or share the link to our podcast. Also, you can watch a video recording.

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Of our most recent episodes on YouTube, the link to that is also in our show notes.

Yes. Also, we would really appreciate it if you would follow, subscribe to or leave a review for us on either YouTube or your favorite podcasting platform. These things are completely free for you to do, but it really helps new people find the Beautiful View podcast.

Yeah. And shout out once again to the hopeful few for the catchy theme song on our podcast. You can check out more of their music on Spotify or Apple Music. The links are in our show note.

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We hope you have a great day and always remember to keep an eye open for opportunities in life to see a beautiful view.

Yes.