Archive | Remembering Our Babies

Remembering Our Babies: Perspective

October 19, 2012 By Jeniffer

This post is part of our Remembering Our Babies week. You can find out more about it and read others’ stories here.

There are events in our lives that, no matter how long ago they were or how small they seemed at the time, affect us deeply. When I lost my first two pregnancies to miscarriages, I had no idea how they would affect me.

At first, I was insanely jealous of every pregnant woman I saw. While several college classmates were announcing their good news, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be in their shoes. How I would do anything to be there too.

Then I found out that I was pregnant with Abby.

I spent the first trimester reminding myself of the signs of miscarriage, constantly trying to calm myself down. I would be okay for the first two weeks after a doctor’s visit, but the two weeks leading up to the next visit were torture because I had convinced myself that I had miscarried. That died down some when I could feel her move, but I still was convinced that it was only a matter of time before I lost her. On the day she was born, I was amazed that she was here. Alive. I couldn’t stop looking at her, and I hardly got any sleep while we were at the hospital. I thought for sure that the next pregnancy would be easier.

Honestly, I wish that had been the case. I wish that I had experienced that bubbly joy, the anticipation, the waiting. But I didn’t. Instead, I was afraid to go to the doctor for the first few weeks. I was afraid that I had a missed miscarriage, that this dream would end when the ultrasound started. Melissa came with me to that visit, and I’m so thankful that she was there. She held my hand as the screen popped up, and there in front of us was this sweet little squirmy baby! I couldn’t get over the fact that this baby was there. Alive.

My second full-term pregnancy was easier to deal with simply because I could put all of my energy into Abby. I could, and often did, ignore the fact that I was pregnant. When I did stop to think about it, I was still worried that Lily wouldn’t make it home. When she was finally born, after being 11 days overdue and about a week of prodromal labor, the doctor found a knot in her cord. Yet she was born without any complications whatsoever. I’m still amazed and humbled that she is so healthy and perfect.

I would love to say that Lily’s birth taught me a lesson about how ultimately God is in control and that I’ll never doubt again. I’d love to say that I’m able to rejoice with my friends when they announce their pregnancies now. I’d love to say that I’m over my fears. But I can’t.

The truth is that my experiences with pregnancy will always affect my perspective. When someone announces a pregnancy, I’m not excited. Instead, I’m concerned and a bit worried. I’ve seen two of my pregnancies and several others end early. I’ve seen perfect, full-term pregnancies end in stillbirth. I’ve seen things take an unexpected turn, so I’m cautious. I get excited on the days that babies are born. I get excited when babies are here. Alive.

I have learned one thing, though. Miscarriages and stillbirths happen. They rock our worlds, and they shape them. They are the result of the evil in this world. But when our worlds are shaken, when hope fades dim, God is the One who brings us through it all. He gives us the grace and strength to make it through another day. Here. Alive.

If you’d like to share your baby loss story, you can link up on our Share Your Story page. You can read Melissa’s miscarriage story here, her rainbow story here, and Jeniffer’s miscarriage story here. Thank you for taking the time to remember with us.

Read full story · Comments { 2 } in Angelversary, Baby Loss, Healing, Miscarriages, Remembering Our Babies

Remembering Our Babies: Share Your Story

October 15, 2012 By Jeniffer

As we mentioned last week on our Facebook page, we are spending the week of October 15-19 remembering our babies, in observance of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day. To read more about our heart for this week, we invite you to read Jeniffer’s post from last year here.

While we are honored to share our own stories with you, we also realize that you have stories, too. We would love for you to link up your stories of baby loss, whether you write it for this event or if you wrote it years ago. If you link up, we’d appreciate it if you would take the time to read and comment on the story before yours, even if the only comment you can think of is to say that you read their story and are thinking about them. If you’d like, you can also share our button (below), which links back to this page. You can also include the linky on your own post if you’d like to share it with your readers. Our prayer for this week is that it’s a time for women to gather around each other and just love on one another. You don’t have to remember alone. Thank you for joining us.

The Sisters

get the InLinkz code

Read full story · Comments { 1 } in Angelversary, Baby Loss, Healing, Miscarriages, Remembering Our Babies

The Thing With Feathers: Hope on this Good Friday

April 6, 2012 By Jeniffer

This has been a rough week. Not for me, exactly, but for two of my friends (one whom I’ve grown close to after she married one of my husband’s best friends and one whom I’ve gotten to know through Sisters ‘N Cloth and Twitter.) It’s heartbreaking to read their stories, both so very different and yet so similar. Both experiencing, in one form or another, a feeling I’m all too familiar with.

Heartache. Loss. The grieving of a dream. And both of them wanting the same thing: children. Both of them hoping against hope.

Emily Dickinson described hope in this way:

Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

Sometimes the hope that keeps us bouyed so often in the gales gets crushed by a word, a phrase, a well-meaning remark. Sometimes it’s in the never-ending hoping against hope that we find our strength…or our weakness.

Sometimes the dark hours of Good Friday mask our hearts, and we find ourselves in the grave of despair, unable to see that though the sorrow may last for the night, His joy comes in the morning.

And isn’t that the beauty of it all? That sorrow and joy must dance this beautiful, tragic piece in our lives for the true glory of God to be seen more clearly. That we, when our lives become ugly and against all odds we find peace, we find true hope.

Storms come, they bash our hope, and we make the decision to stand anyway. We bend, yes. We come back altered and sometimes shaken. But altered for the better. Changed to look more like Christ.

Sunday comes, the soldiers shake in fear, and the angels cry out that He is alive…in us!

I’m not going to lie. These times of victory? They can be very short-lived. They can end up as vague memories, not remarkable turning points in our lives. Sometimes they look ugly from our view, a time that we would rather forget instead of commemorate. But. What they do in our lives, how they shape us, can never be forgotten. The difference in us, in our perceptions of this world are so sharp that they cannot be denied.

And hope? Hope grows its wings once more, flying stronger into the wind whether we acknowledge it or not.

This Easter, let’s decide to remember. To hope. Because the grave, the despair? It isn’t the end.

I highly encourage you to read this post from lesson: learned. Such a powerful statement of hope during a week that begs us to remember death as well as the Resurrection.