Eight years ago, my spouse and I began the process of starting a family. We had agreed to wait five years after getting married before trying to have kids, and those five years were up. We were at good places in our careers to think about babies, and so we decided it was time.
And in a story that I will be writing about until I die, we had miscarriage after miscarriage. Five, to be exact. One horrible trip to the emergency room after suffering all day teaching classes. Two very early tragic trips to the bathroom. And two D&Cs—the disorienting procedure where you go to sleep pregnant and wake up not pregnant.
Friends whispered their stories to me. Older women patted me on the head with the empty promise, “You’ll have a baby one day.” People who didn’t know what else to say trotted out phrases like, “At least you know you can get pregnant” and “God has a plan” and “This will make you appreciate your baby one day even more.”
The grief nearly suffocated me, and in many ways, it was the catalyst for everything that came after. The reexamination of my faith, my vocation, my life.
I became a mom in seminary as I began the ordination process. I sat in my first ordination interview six weeks postpartum—my breasts leaking, my underarms sweating in a way that only postpartum people understand.
I can’t disentangle these two identities: momand pastor, pastor and mom. I am both, and they are related somehow.
And so here I sit now. In a coffee shop as my first child and sixth pregnancy is at dance class. I will go home to my second child and seventh pregnancy later today and try to imprint his snuggle on me as I prepare to return to work after a blissful maternity leave.
It is the beginning of a new chapter in our lives. No longer the baby-making years, but rather, the child-rearing years.
As this chapter flips open, another chapter closes.
The baby-making years were also the years that tethered me to the babies that never were. The pregnancies that concluded too soon.
People have asked me if I’m ready to return to work, if I’m ready to leave my baby at daycare. Aside from my anger at the heinous lack of federally mandated and paid parental leave, I am, I think.
I wish I could stay home a little longer with my little one, but I am also ready to start my new job. I’m ready to have daily conversations with adults. I knew this maternity leave had an ending date.
And I’m ready to be done with pregnancy.
I have been pregnant seven times, after all.
From the moment of my first pregnancy to the moment my daughter was born, I had been pregnant off and on for three years. I am ready to be done with pregnancy.
What I didn’t anticipate was the grief of leaving the chapter where all the other pregnancies existed. They do not carry over to this next chapter like my children will. Their story ends now.
Of course, I carry the pregnancies in my heart. I carry their DNA in my body. I will write about that time in my life for a long time. All of that is true, I know.
But this is also true: the state of being that tied me to all the babies-that-could-have-been is over. I am moving on.
And I am moving on without them.
I have done enough therapy about the miscarriages that I know that me moving on is not a betrayal.
And yet.
Could even the healthiest person on earth not feel a twinge of betrayal?
Those five pregnancies that preceded my babies did not exist to be lessons in my life or catalysts for my life to change. Their existence was not for the purpose of my own growth.
And yet, their existence, and then demise, changed my life. I am a different person because of them.
I am a different kind of mother because of them.
I am a different kind of pastor because of them.
I am a different woman because of them.
And now I am closing the door and saying goodbye.
It’s my conviction that every person who experiences a pregnancy loss gets to narrate it for themselves however they want to. We try to make sense of what is happening to our bodies and hormones and hearts however we can, and we reserve the right to tell the story how we want.
For me, I did not find solace in thinking about babies being in heaven. Let alone what I think about the evangelical version of heaven.
I don’t hold onto the belief that I will “see” the products of these pregnancies again, particularly because for three of them, they were just blobs of tissues. Only one had discernible contours of a body.
But I do believe, somehow, the love that made these pregnancies and held on to them years after they concluded began and remains in the heart of God.
They are dust now, my own ending one day.
And yet it was our beginning, too.
So even as I close this chapter where those pregnancies remain, we will come full circle, won’t we?
My eyes are filled with tears as I think about all of this and write it down.
How many times have I told this story? Too many to count.
How many times will I tell it again? More than what has already been told, I’m sure.
And will I always cry when I talk about those five pregnancies-become-miscarriages?
I hope so.
I post once a week about questions, stories, and faithiness. The weekly post goes out to everyone, for free, always.
By becoming a paid subscriber, you also receive a weekly links post filled with the best stuff I read/listened to/watched, as well as the occasional audio recording of posts. You also have the ability to leave comments.
And of course, by being a paid subscriber, your generosity allows me to continue to do this work, and to do it better each week.
As usual after reading your posts, I feel like a better person because of it. I am so thankful that you share your thoughts with us. God bless and God speed.
Thank you for your heartrending vulnerability in this post. I'm blessed to have read it and in some small way shared in your experience.