Such Common Suffering

This is a post about loss.

There’s no soft or eloquent way to start this post, so I’ll just say it as abruptly as it happened — last Wednesday, I was 12 weeks pregnant and by Thursday, I wasn’t pregnant at all.

I went to see my midwives Wednesday afternoon to assuage my anxiety after some light spotting. It was totally normal, they told me, but let me come in for an ultrasound anyway.

I was prepared to leave there feeling relieved and maybe a little bit silly for overreacting. But I hadn’t spotted at all my first pregnancy and my anxiety wasn’t letting it go, so I was happy to trade in some chill mom chips in exchange for a little reassurance.

Our nanny wasn’t available that day, so we brought Jo with us to the appointment. Ryan held her as such fussed and fidgeted while the sonographer placed the jelly and the big wand and told me just to breathe.

It was my second ultrasound of this pregnancy.

The first had been at 7 weeks, confirming what the digital tests had told me - life, new life, small and sturdy. Heartbeat strong.

But this time was different. That life had ended without me knowing it. The baby was still there, the heartbeat was not.

We left in shock with instructions to just wait and let my body “do its thing.”

---

To say I fell apart would be an understatement. A loss of that magnitude is simply too much to hold.

That night, we went to bed early. I watched baking videos on YouTube while trying to stop crying. I heard Ryan’s rhythmic breathing beside me and eventually that or the baking lulled me into sleep.

Jo woke up around 3 - not entirely uncommon as she’s never been a great sleeper. I got up to walk to the nursery, preparing for our usual routine, some gentle rocking, me humming you are my sunshine until she settles.

But on my way to her room I felt things start to spin. I was sweating and shivering at the same time and then looked down to realize the bleeding had finally caught up. A horrible relief that the wait wouldn’t be long. 

I woke Ryan to tag in for Jo duty and asked for a towel and some water when he returned. And then I sat in my bed, alone at 3am, and felt my child draining from me. 

I’ll spare you the details of what followed but it was graphic, violent. And so it should be, I suppose. Death has never been gentle. It is deep and visceral. It is garish and vile. 

---

I know the statistics around miscarriage. 1 in 4 pregnancies. 25%. I knew them when I was pregnant with Jo and I knew them this time too.

I knew them when I took the test and lost it over the sight of the word “pregnant” because I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have another.

I knew them when I put Jo in a Big Sister onesie to surprise Ryan with the news.

I knew them when we told our families and closest friends.

I knew them when we learned it was a boy - a son - and we laid in bed watching Lost and trying out all the male characters’ names against Jarrell. 

I knew them. 1 in 4. 25% in the first trimester.

But we’d made it to Week 12. We were so close to the end of that window. I’d started to let go of the fear. I thought we’d made it to the other side.

That’s the thing about statistics. We love to spout them off as if they matter, as if they mean something.

I think they give us a sense of control - a feeling of agency in the prison of uncertainty in which we live. 

But they don’t. They don’t give us anything.

Because when it comes down to it, the odds for you are either 0 or 100%. You’re either the 1 or the other 3. Your baby will either live or it just fucking won’t.

---

I fell back asleep at some point that night with Hudson at my feet and Ryan’s hand on my arm. A gesture so small it wouldn’t be worthy of mention except that being held in that moment, even just at the elbow, by the one person I needed - I need - most in this world might’ve been the only thing holding me together while my body split itself into parts.

---

It’s so common, I know, to lose a baby in that first precious third of a pregnancy. So common that I bet you’ve thought of at least two people you know while reading this who’ve experienced it. So common that one of those 2 people might be you. 

And yet, the loss is so personal, so intimate, which is to say, so goddamn lonely, that the idea of it being so common feels somehow worse. 

It’s like there’s a room full of women who’ve all been through this similar, horrible thing but none of us can hear each other over the static of loss.

Like each of us is standing in a box made of glass. Stacked in rows next to each other. Surrounded, but trapped.

People talk about how common this kind of loss is as if it might help somehow. Like there might be some comfort in knowing how frequently this happens, how normal it is. 

But there’s nothing comforting about thinking of the millions of other women who’ve laid in bed feeling their child rip away from their insides. There’s nothing normal about hoards of us who have to endure this loss while measuring our own bleeding to make sure it isn’t “too much.”

It is too much. Any amount. Any life lost. Any one of us having to house and feel and witness and, unbelievably, dispose of the loss itself. 

I take no solace in the sameness of our suffering. It doesn’t matter how many women are in this room with me when the room shouldn’t exist in the first place. 

---

Normally this is the part where I start to tie things up with some spiritual ribbon of hope or grace and we all leave here on a good note. 

But I don’t think I can do that this time.

If I’m honest, I’m pretty pissed at God right now. (Don’t worry, He’s aware.) And I have no words of comfort to offer on our way out. 

So, I will offer someone else’s words instead. In the hopes that maybe they will encourage anyone else standing in a glass box today. In the hopes that maybe, one day, they will encourage me too.

---

Leader: O Christ Who Gathered
Children in Your Arms, 

You know our ache. You know this void
no human words can fill. 

You understand this grief for our little one,
lost while in the womb. 

You were witness to our rising joy.
You saw our crumbling hope.
Now you behold our sinking sorrow. 

People: Christ, be merciful, for we are frail.
And in our frailty we have suffered such loss. 

Heavenly Father, see what room our love had already
carved out—in our home and in our hearts—for
the welcome and the wonder of
this child, whose face we had not kissed,
and whose tiny hands we had not held,
but who had already grown so precious to us. 

Were we not radiant with anticipation, O Lord,
building forward to the day when we would
finally meet and cradle our sweet child? 

Only to be met instead with this cratering
heartache of sudden loss, this unexpected
death of our little one before birth; and with it
this dying of dreams for all that might have been.
Christ, be merciful for we are frail.
And in our frailty we have suffered such loss. 

For here we have entered a communion, O Lord,
a fellowship none have ever wished to join, of all
mothers and fathers and families across time
who have wept for their lost children. 

We lament so much that now will never be.
This child we lost will be for us in this life like
a song unsung, and a story untold. 

Christ, be merciful, for we are frail.
And in our frailty we have suffered such loss. 

The petitioners sit a moment in the silence of this grief. 

And yet, even in our deep loss, O Lord,
you have not abandoned us
or left us without light and hope. 

For we remember how you, Jesus, loved and
welcomed little ones, touching their heads and
blessing them, declaring that the
kingdom of heaven belonged to these. 

And you have told us that your promises
are for us and for our children. 

And this one whom we lost, was this not
also our child, O God? 

Our hearts ache even to ponder such things,
but is it possible that when all creation is
made new, we will find fellowship there with one
we could not hold in this life? 

Could the redemption of this world’s harms
run so deep? So beyond all imagining? 

Your word says little of such mysteries.
And yet, in what is revealed
we find good reason to take heart. 

Christ, be merciful, for we are frail.
And in our frailty we have suffered such loss. 

For even amidst uncertainty, this we know
to be true of your works, O Father, and this
we will cling to: 

Your grace, your mercy, your redemption, and
your love will extend further and will be more
wondrous in their perfection
than we have ever imagined. 

However we might try to conceive of such joys,
that conception will be either errant or
incomplete, because we, in our finite knowledge
and capacity for hope, will limit the picture we
paint in ways that you, in your limitless joy and
relentless grace, will never be bounded by. However
we might envision the redemption
of this loss, the actual redemption that you
effect will be still more glorious. 

So let us learn to steward well this holy sorrow,
assured that it is in some way the buried seed
of a flower that will blossom into eternity. 

O Christ, be merciful, for we are frail.
And in our frailty we have suffered such loss. 

Indeed, this future hope will not end
the pain we feel today. It does not negate
the emptiness of the womb where new life
stirred. It does not fill the empty cradle. 

But it does declare that the empty cradle
and the empty womb will not have power
to grieve us forever, for one day our eternal
joys will flow backward in time, even to this
broken place. And then those joys will fill every
emptiness and every heartbreak the children
of God have ever endured. 

Now, O Lord,
we remember your past faithfulness.
We receive your present comforts.
We await your future redemptions.
Let us, in this and in all sorrows,
be met by your lovingkindness
and consoled by your hope. 

For yours, O Father,
is the kingdom,
and the power,
and the glorious redemption
of all our losses. 

Even of this one. 

Amen.