My thoughts on miscarriage

My friend Shauna miscarried last weekend. It made me go through all the emotions and thoughts from our own miscarriage. I have a tendency to analyze, analyze, and over-analyze, but when I have things aligned in my mind it helps me to accept and understand them. So here are some of my personal analyses about miscarriage. My first pregnancy was in the summer of 2005. When I miscarried at 11 weeks, I hadn’t told anybody at all, mostly because it was so exciting having such a huge secret between just Brent and I. I know a lot of women don’t tell people about a pregnancy in case of miscarriage (and that’s absolutely fine for them), but when we miscarried, that was my biggest regret. By the time we told people, the baby was gone. There was no joyous celebration, no exciting loving of a new baby. I felt that I, and in turn my baby, missed out on the happiness of his existence. And I found that it helped when people knew and talked to me about it. My miscarriage was at the ward campout. We left after everybody had gone to bed, and the executive secretary brought things back to my house the next day. He called the bishop from my house, and after the next day’s RS announcement, everybody knew. A lot of women came to talk to me and I was surprised to see how much I loved that and how much it strengthened me. I had a great and strong need to talk about the miscarriage. I felt like it was the only way to still stay in contact with the baby we lost. And I loved talking with women who had also had miscarriages. There is a secret club of women who have experienced this incredibly unique kind of loss and we all band together when a miscarriage happens. The sisterhood that results is a true blessing. It obviously didn’t help to hear “oh, I had a few miscarriages, my cousin Darcy had four, and even our neighbor Stephanie had one…” But it did help when somebody would give me a tight hug and say “I had a miscarriage and I am thinking about you.” I also did a lot of reading about the how and why of miscarriage and found that there is very little that you can do to cause or to stop a miscarriage. The theory that made the most sense to me was that when the chromosomes combine, something doesn’t fit. At every stage of development, everything goes as normal until the stage where the missing/mismatched/wrong chromosomes are needed, whether that stage is 5 weeks, 11 weeks, or whenever. Then the body doesn’t know what the next stage of development should be and stops developing. Meaning it’s not that he would have been “deformed,” but that his body had already developed as much as it possibly could. It made sense to me, but didn't answer the bigger questions. Did the baby I lost have a spirit? Will he be waiting for me in heaven? Or was it never really a body and therefore a spirit never dwelt there and therefore not a person? Each mother has their own answer for this, and I believe each mother is entitled to her own answer for this, and I have heard a lot of different answers from a lot of different women. But since I’m writing, you get to read my answers. In my career, I worked with people with severe disabilities. I saw a lot of broken and virtually useless bodies, each one housing a strong and vibrant spirit. I realized then that on the spectrum of abilities, my “able” body was like a brand new sports car and theirs an old rusty bicycle. But I also believe that after the resurrection when we discard the mortal debilitations we have, our bodies will resemble (in the transportation analogy, of course) a slick, sleek space ship with heated seats and a gravity chamber and a built-in dvd player and more amazing stuff that hasn’t even been invented. Compared to this space ship, the sports car isn’t much better than the bike. We will look back on how we defined abilities and disabilities in this life and laugh because we were all so significantly hobbled when compared to our celestial destiny. Back to my little 11-week fetus-child, I saw his incredibly small and underdeveloped body, but it was still very clearly a precious body that had developed as much as it mortally and physically could. And when compared to how small and underdeveloped we all are compared to what we will eventually become, I felt strongly that his little body was just as capable as housing a spirit as mine, and that with his 11 weeks of development he could absolutely have experienced mortality. There is no specific church policy or stated doctrine about it. The best I found is an opinion by Joseph Fielding Smith about stillborn children. “There is no information given by revelation in regard to the status of stillborn children. However, I will express my personal opinion that we should have hope that these little ones will receive a resurrection and then belong to us.” (Doctrines of Salvation, 2:280.) But I searched for a prophetic statement or something scriptural to support my emotions and found one of each. Brigham Young taught that “when the mother feels life come to her infant it is the spirit entering the body.” (Journal of Discourses, 17:143.) Through more sensitive instruments, we know now that those tiny babies move and swim and dance very early in development, like five or six weeks. The mom just can’t feel it until he’s big enough to bump into things in there. So if it was the movement that Brigham was referring to rather than the mother’s senses, the spirit joins with the body pretty early in development. I know I’m reading quite a lot into the statement, but I’m okay with that. In Luke 1, we read that when the angel appeared to Mary, he told her that her cousin Elisabeth had conceived a son and “this is the sixth month with her” (verse 36). So five months along. Mary visits Elisabeth and “abode with her about three months, and returned to her own house” (verse 56). It seems that Mary left before John was born. To give her enough time to abide there for three months, she had to have arrived about a month after the angel had first appeared to her. And already, Elisabeth knew that Mary was pregnant with Christ. When Mary showed up on her doorstep “the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost” (verse 41) and she greeted Mary as “the mother of my Lord” (verse 43). Baby John, only in the second trimester of development himself, recognized Baby Jesus mere weeks after conception. I could be completely wrong on my calendaring and the meaning of the statements. And even if I am right, it is absolutely possible that half-God children develop differently than mere full-mortal children. But what I get from it is that it is entirely feasible that an extremely newly developing body can house a spirit. So I feel that there is a spirit waiting for me in the afterlife. If, when I get there, that’s not the case, I’ll be fine with it. I have a friend who says the same thing but opposite. She feels that there is not a spirit waiting for her. If there is when she gets there, then great. Each mother is entitled to her own revelation and there is a huge possibility that each situation is different. So after all of that, what have I done differently because of my miscarriage? First of all, as soon as I found out I was pregnant with Miriam and Elijah, I started talking to them and loving them because I didn’t know how long I’d have with them. We told our families and friends early on in the pregnancies for the same reason. Luckily, they’re now 3 and 1 and I still adore them. I worked to enjoy pregnancy rather than wish it to pass fast and complain about everything because that’s what I didn’t have and wanted so badly for so long. It is also surprisingly nice to be in that club of mothers who have miscarried and it is a unique feeling to be the one to hug another woman and tell her “I had a miscarriage too and I’m thinking about you.” I know that I love my babies differently because of that first loss. I don’t think I love them better or stronger than other mothers love theirs, but it is a different kind of love than I could have given them otherwise. So there you have it. I didn’t realize I was going to be writing a novel, but after I started it just kept coming and coming. It is a topic I feel strongly about and quite frankly there’s a lot I left out. Unfortunately, miscarriages are rampant. More women that I thought possible have experienced it. As much as I would have preferred not to have experienced it, I’m grateful for what I have learned and who I have become because of it. But I’m also glad I only had one.