Shattered Dreams

During the first ten years of our marriage, as part of our struggle with infertility, my husband and I experienced the loss of three pregnancies.  Each loss was a significant loss for us.   Each loss challenged our sense of self, our marriage, and in some significant way, our faith.  While surrounded by people able to bring forth the fullness of life, we felt it was ours to know only emptiness and death.  When, after extensive invasive procedures, I finally was able to become pregnant, each pregnancy carried all of our hopes and our dreams.  To lose each pregnancy, to suffer miscarriage, was to know the pain of our hopes being crushed, our dreams dying.  Each pregnancy was the loss of one of our children, someone who in those few and early weeks we had come to love, cherish, and hold closely in our hearts.

I don’t believe it was God’s will for those three pregnancies to end.  The God in whom I believe is a God of life.

I don’t believe it was “for the best” because those pregnancies may have produced a child impaired in one way or another.  My husband and I have enough love and care within us for children with special needs.

I don’t believe a pregnancy loss is an insignificant event.  For us each loss was the death of our longed-for child.

Not everyone who suffers pregnancy loss will “get pregnant again right away.”  It will not be quickly forgotten.  It doesn’t erase the anguish when one has a child to come home to after such a loss.  Death is death, with all it’s power and pain.         -Diane Maodush-Pitzer

Wisdom for the Caregiver (from Diane)

• Worship and Liturgy are important for my husband and myself.  Friends who were close understood that and helped us put together a service of remembering for the babies we lost.  Each child has a name and holds a place in our memories and hearts.
• We appreciated the few people who were willing to listen to our experience:  those people understood it was no small thing we should be over quickly.  We appreciated those who simply said, “I’m sorry,” or, “I am praying for you”;  in times of struggle and loss it can be difficult to pray for oneself.  Most of all, we appreciated people who simply let us experience the grief and walked beside us quietly and compassionately.

For additional information: Wisdom – Miscarriage and Stillbirth

Also review Caregiving Basics

Photo Credit:  Jackie O