Womanly Wednesday: Grieving Miscarriage

Welcome to this week’s Womanly Wednesday! In this series, different women share their struggles, bravely opening up about their stories so that other people would be inspired and encouraged.  Make sure to check out the Womanly Wednesday archives to read other posts from this series! 

A wave is defined as a disturbance that spreads through a medium.

Picture the ocean on a calm day. Gentle wave after wave meet the shore, predictably and harmlessly. And then one rogue wave crashes in and disrupts the balance. Maybe there was something that caused it – a change in the tide, or the wind, or an undercurrent. Maybe a storm is coming and the new roughness was fully predictable. Maybe nothing changed in the ocean or on the shore, and that rogue wave was just that… rogue.

There is a reason we say that grief comes in waves. Before or after a storm, the surf is rough and grief is raw. It sweeps you off your feet. But time passes and pain fades. You learn to walk in the surf.

Growing up, I never wanted children. I was haunted by the eating disorder skeletons in my closet, coupled with all the troubles I knew my mom had getting pregnant. In Fall 2015, my then-Doctor said that I wouldn’t be able to have a child without medical intervention, and my husband Ted and I grieved for the future. But we moved on pretty quickly, because we had already discussed not having children by choice. Flash forward a few months.

In February 2015, I lost a baby that I didn’t think I could carry to begin with, and the grief was stifling.

It’s hard to explain what it feels like to lose a child you’ve never met. In my mind, I became a mother the moment I found out I was pregnant. Ted and I were both afraid of what the future would look like, but we were so excited. We got lost in daydreams of raising our son or daughter. We mused at how young we’d be when he or she graduated high school. We picked names, nursery colors, newborn photos. We talked about how we’d raise our child to be a decent human in a broken world. We started to buy our first home.

Then I miscarried and the waves hit. I questioned everything – why would God give me something I was fine without, only to have me fall in love with it and take it away? New grief sandwiches you somewhere between “I feel nothing” and “Everything hurts.” I believe there is nothing so painful as losing a child, at any age, because you don’t just lose the child. You lose the hope of the future for everything that child would go on to do and be. You lose an entire lifetime of possibilities.

The doctor called it a chemical pregnancy, too early for a heartbeat or to be considered a fetus, but if we were trying we’d be welcome to try again immediately. Flush with emotions, I heard: “The baby you lost was not a baby yet. The loss was so insignificant that your body doesn’t even need time to recover.”

Jeremiah 1:5: says “I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.” Even if modern medicine didn’t consider my baby a real baby yet, I did, and so did the God of the universe.

Ted and I grieved deeply, but clung to the hope that we would at least be able to conceive a child if we chose. I credit him and a few very close friends for pointing me back to my faith and reminding me that it’s okay to feel a cocktail of emotions at once. We were full of hope and joy for the future, but still sad about what we lost.

Eight months later, our prayers were answered – I was pregnant again. We were guarded, but overjoyed. We resurfaced the familiar conversations about names, nursery colors and who our child might grow up to be. And in what felt like an instant, I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

It’s been almost nine months since our second loss, and the waves of grief still come and go. Ted and I are both able to experience joy in the everyday, but sometimes we are swept away with sadness.

And that’s the beautiful part – we are drawn closer to each other and to our faith because of what has happened, grief and all. For anyone out there struggling with grief (whether it’s miscarriage or not), know that you are not alone. You don’t need to apologize for feeling the way that you do, and you don’t need to be ashamed to experience joy while you are grieving. Grief comes and goes, and there isn’t an end date when you are should hold yourself to be done grieving. Some days I am fine, and other days I lay in bed and am physically and mentally wrecked by thoughts like, “Would today be the day you would have arrived, little one?” The grieving process is not a straight line. My grief is valid. Your grief is valid, too, and you should never be made to feel otherwise.

As for Ted and I, we are waiting, but aren’t pressing pause on our lives to wait. We are grieving, but we don’t let that stop us from experiencing joy. We don’t understand why this is the reality God has given us, but we trust in his timing.

For now, we will honor the waiting space and take the waves as they come.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

Louisa Katherine Shumaker, (affectionately Weezy, professionally Kate) is a former corporate cube-dweller turned fitness professional. She is most passionate about fitness, self-love, great burgers and animal welfare. She coaches CrossFit and personal trains clients at CrossFit Cool Springs. She also works with an event registration and scoring platform called Throwdowns.com. She and her husband, Ted, own a home in Franklin, TN with an entire army of fur babies: two dogs, two cats, and five foster puppies. You can find Weezy on Instagram as@thekateshumaker, on Facebook as Kate Shumaker, and on her blog about fitness, faith, marriage and tattoos at Weezy’s Rebirth.