Grief After Miscarriage

Several years ago, after battling years of infertility while trying to get pregnant with our first two children, I found myself miraculously pregnant with our third child naturally. I remember the morning I got the positive pregnancy test. My feet barely touched the stairs as I bounded up the steps from our basement bathroom to the kitchen to tell my husband I was pregnant. I practically shrieked, “I’m pregnant!” to my husband who by this time was concerned with my joyful hysteria.

Later that night as we sat down together after the kids went to bed, I confessed, “I know this may sound silly, but this baby is a boy and his name is Ezra David.” Knowing how practical I usually am, my husband was a bit amused by my proclamation, but he knew me well enough not to laugh at me. He simply said something along the lines of, “That’s a good name. We’ll wait and see what the baby is before committing.”

Fast forward a few weeks and the spotting started. I had spotting with my previous two pregnancies, but something just didn’t seem right to me. As the blood quickly changed from brown to red, I became more alarmed and called my doctor… only to find out she didn’t practice obstetrics any more.

Scrambling to find a new doctor, I found a clinic that would send me for tests and an ultrasound. As I lay on the exam table and saw our sweet little “peanut” on the screen, I smiled. That smile quickly changed though when the tech announced how far along I was. “6 weeks,” she said. My heart sunk. She told me they would check again next week when they should be able to hear a heartbeat better, but I already knew. This baby was no longer with us. I should have been over 8 weeks.

I cried as we left and I found myself begging God to take the baby from me, to not prolong my hopes if indeed he was gone. The next day… he was no longer with us.

I grieved. Deeply. For about a week.

But I also found myself rejoicing in the fact that God had allowed me to truly KNOW my child. I called him by name for 4 beautiful weeks. I cherished those few weeks I had with him. They were memories that I’ll forever “ponder in my heart.”

I haven’t shared much of his story over the years, but lately I’ve been thinking about his birth.

As I scroll through social media, I see others sharing the heart wrenching loss of their sweet babies and my heart grieves with them, but as I watch others grieve, I sometimes feel like I grieve “wrongly” somehow. I don’t think of him very often. I don’t still mourn his loss in a tangible way. Beyond the first couple weeks, I haven’t cried (with the exception of listening to JJ Heller sing “Always” recently).

I’ve been thinking lately about how I seem to grieve differently than others, and that’s when it hit me… we ALL grieve differently. I grieved gut wrenchingly hard for a week or two, but then I found a verse in the Bible that gave me purpose and hope and from that moment, the sun slowly began to shine for me again.

Maybe you are like me. You grieve privately. Your grief was short-lived. You don’t think of the baby you lost every day.

I just want to tell you. It’s ok that you grieve differently.

It’s ok if you grieve publicly… or privately.

It’s ok if you tell everyone… or no one.

Your grief does not have to look like others.

It doesn’t mean you care less. It doesn’t mean you care more.

It’s just different.

And that’s ok.

I have his birth stone on my bracelet and his initials on a necklace. He was my baby, and when I think of him, there is joy. God gave me that miracle baby so that I could praise Him, and while my grief may look differently from others, it’s still real and God’s goodness still saw me through. Just because I cry a bit less maybe doesn’t mean I didn’t care as much… it just means I grieve(d) differently.

Maybe you feel the same way?

I wrote THIS post shortly after he was born in heaven. God gave me a verse that gave me hope and a purpose, and I pray it is a blesses to you as well.