When the Cold Winds Blow: Healing from Pregnancy and Infant Loss

When the autumn winds blow fresh and cool, the maple leaves ambling to the ground, a slow but pervasive sadness creeps up. It doesn’t take long for me to know why.

And in the midst of this ache, a little light trickles in.

An idea. A glimmering grace to hold onto. A comfort to ease the pain.

Gathering leaves, big and small, symmetrical or somewhat askew, I hold them to my heart.

With broken crayons, sheets of blank paper and children needing something to do, I demonstrate. Taking a single leaf, I cover it with paper and rub it over and over again with a red crayon.

As if by magic, the leaf appears. First the stem, the veins and the outline of the leaf’s three points.

My kids are in awe and my heart is at rest. 

To turn death into a learning experience, a thing to grow from, gives me renewed focus and grace...

To look to the One who comforts me and love on the ones I have here.

I have this little blue scrapbook. A book of remembrance. Of a time of waiting for a sweet little baby. A son. His prognosis was grave. I was his life support. When he was born, he would die. Back then, bilateral renal agenesis (BRA) had no treatment and still has no cure. I received the news the beginning of autumn.

December came and he was wrapped up warm and comfortable in my womb while I waited for his birth day. The day I’d have to say goodbye.

Another month before his due date, I spent half that windswept day on a playground with my two-year-old Bright Girl. Pushing her in the swing. Watching her joy as she raced around, her sneakers crunching on the fallen leaves. Not knowing it would be the day before my son’s birth day.

Giving birth to a child born without the capacity to live was incomprehensible. How can you prepare for it?

All I could do was breathe and pray.  

When trying to savor each moment, time slows down. It would be one of the longest days of my life. And, I held my little boy, my Luke, for as long as I could before he passed from here to heaven.

I left the hospital, with empty womb and empty arms.

Trying to find some sort of normalcy, when my strength returned, I took my toddler to the playground. As I pushed her in the swing, a shadow seemed to block the sun. It wasn’t a shadow others could see, but it was felt. And only by me.

I don’t remember how long the shadow lasted, but it came and went like the ebb and flow of the tides.

And it's been like that each and every autumn, when the cold winds begin to blow. For twelve years now. The shadow of grief comes. Sometimes for a day, sometimes a bit longer.

At this point, I don't know if I can call grief a friend, but I now see a pattern for when it settles in.

And, I don't mind it anymore.

Loving and losing someone hurts. The pain means they mattered. And, the latent grief that comes is a reminder to us to think of the ones we miss in heaven. The ones we're waiting to see again.

And when the shadow of grief seems to linger, just remember...

You will bloom again.

Like the sunflowers who turn to face the sun, may we turn to face our Savior and wait for His healing, comfort and grace.

A wise king once said,

“To every thing there is a season…a time to be born and a time to die...a time to weep and a time to laugh…” (Ecclesiastes 3:3-8)

And Jesus said, 

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Matthew 5:4).”

Death has not won the victory, Christ has. His love is eternal. Death couldn't stop Him. He lives on

 and by grace, our loved ones who are gone, live on.

Faith gives us hope.

Hope helps us bloom. To be open to joy.

Love is the source of that hope—the love of Christ, our gentle Savior who leads us on the path He has laid out for us. 

For some of us, it is the path of grieving in hope. The hope that brings whispers of a joy to come. On falling leaves and in fingers making impressions for little hearts to learn.

Tear Tea

Have a seat and relax.  I'd like to have a cup of tear tea with you. 

It's ingredients are simple, but can only be made from a heart that's been broken. 

It tastes bitter at first, but you'll find that it can be soothing and sweet if it has a little bit of the honey of fellowship.

Have you ever cried in exasperation for a child who has meltdown after meltdown? 

How about for the loneliness and isolation of the days when your husband has to work late and all your children are sick? 

What about tears of grief? There are some women (and I am one of them) who have cried buckets of tears for the loss of an infant child, either before or after birth. 

This is a reality that happens more than we are willing to admit. The admittance only brings on more tears, more pain. 

It is no longer for my own grief that the tears come fierce.  The tears come now for other moms, who are on that same path of sorrow that I was destined to take some nine years ago. 

And, so

here I am,

admitting. 

It is healing to admit, for with admittance is an invitation for consolation and for others to hope. 

There is a Light at the end of the tunnel.
 
There is Deliverance from this valley of the shadow of death.
 
Only the Light and the Deliverance don't necessarily mean the pain will end overnight.
 
Sometimes it hurts for a long, long time. 

But, hope means there is a Light shining in the darkness.  There is a Deliverer, and He is Christ.

When I had an early miscarriage, I cried out to the Lord in my pain. And, He showed up, with His perfect peace that "transcends all understanding." 

That same year I became pregnant again and was given the devastating news that the child growing inside my womb had Potter's Syndrome, a condition "incapable with life." That meant, when he was born, unless God decided to intervene, the baby would most certainly die.

Having an early miscarriage was hard, but this seemed unbearably harder.
 
Maybe because I had bonded with my baby. 

I felt his hiccups, his nudges, his wiggles. I had pressed my hand against my protruding belly as he pushed back with ten little toes. I saw the outline of his forehead, nose, and mouth in black and white on the ultrasound screen.
 
And, when he was born, he would die.

It was too much for me to bear. How could I endure it? I did not have the strength to do such a thing.
 
I was at my wit's end, crumpled and broken at the merciful feet of Almighty God.
 
And, my tears were at times, my only relief from the pain. 

My grief was so burdensome, so weighty, that there were few people who could have helped me carry it.

Thankfully, the Lord is good. He gave me wonderful friends, who lifted me up in prayer and met my need for a listening ear and a piping hot dinner when I could barely get out of bed.

He knew my sorrow and provided for me.

Looking back, I couldn't have done it without Him and all the people He sent to help me.

I don't know how anyone could. 

On December 5, 2003, Luke, my fragile, but beautiful baby boy, was born and eight hours later passed on into the hands of God. 

The tears came swift and fierce for many days and then in waves, but with time, their ebb and flow became as gentle and  peaceful as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

And, all those tears meant something, they mattered.  Because they all matter to Him, to the One who holds a well of our tears in the palm of His nail marked hand.

"You have kept count of my tossings,
put my tears in your bottle . Are they not written in your book? (Psalm 56: 8, ESV)"