Growing Pains

Originally posted November 3, 2008 here


One week ago, I was pregnant.  It wasn't really a surprise.  The pregnancy test only confirmed what my husband and I had already known for almost three weeks; without ever actually discussing it, Slice and I had both mentioned our suspicions to other people.  
A week ago I was scared and excited; my husband was ecstatic.  I wanted to wait a while before telling people, but didn't have a real reason.  Just a feeling.  So we laughed and planned, and began announcing the pregnancy to family members. 

Two days ago, I wasn't pregnant anymore.  Once again, somehow, it wasn't a surprise.  My husband and I knew - before any confirmation – that the baby I carried was gone.  I didn't want to believe it.
We talked about the origin of life, the miracle we had witnessed in only a month's time.  We learned firsthand of something that we had only read or heard discussed before.  I gained a powerful witness of the connection between Heaven and Earth, the spirits we parents are entrusted with for only a short time.

And I wept.

Three lifetimes ago, I thought I knew a lot about pregnancy, life, mothering.  After all, I'm the fifth of twelve children.  My mother is a fountain of knowledge and love and wisdom.  (Dad too.)  I've done plenty of my own studying as well: Women's History classes, classes on the history of The Family, demographic studies, research papers, personal accounts.  I thought I knew.

But nothing I read, or saw, or knew could have prepared me for that.  After the thinking and the talking came the pain.  THE PAIN.  My poor husband held me as I writhed in bed and cried, bled and cried some more.  I was falling apart.

After only a few weeks of carrying a baby, I felt loss more keenly than I have ever felt it.  Everything else I had experienced—childhood struggles, teenage inferiority complex, high school relationship drama, college 'education'—seemed insignificant.  I had written three journal entries to that baby already…and I had lost a life.

Now I can see how I was gently rehearsed in the art of miscarriage.  I was reading essays only the day before on other women's experiences with it.  My lovely sister went through the same thing just months ago, and my mother did five times.
Deep down I knew that the timing wasn't right; I wasn't ready.  Maybe I needed the experience to convince myself of that, and to be okay with it.

I am okay with it.

There's one more important thing I've learned about the difference between sympathy and empathy.  One person feels bad for you, the other has been there before.  That other person knows what to say, how to comfort you—how to succor you.  There is nothing more beautiful than this succoring…nothing in this world.
-Rachel