Bringing the Realness

When you're first sucker-punched in the face with news like this, you bounce through a zillion different emotions. There's the classical denial ("surely we will wake up from this nightmare any moment now..."), anger ("What the [pardon-my-french] did we do to deserve this? How could God do this to us? Why the [bleepin' bleep] can't we just have a normal pregnancy? WHAT THE HELL?!!!!!"), and intense sadness. There is crying, yelling, dumbfounded silence.

You entertain so many thoughts that you have a hard time forgiving yourself for. Faced with the prospect of raising a child with intensive special needs, who will likely suffer a great deal for whatever time she has, part of you hopes for a terminal diagnosis. A big part of you. Faced with the prospect of remaining pregnant with a terminal baby, entertaining the well-meaning congratulations of strangers for weeks or perhaps months, completely unable to escape the reality of the situation even for a moment because she's inside your body, part of you prays that this will end sooner rather than later. And then you convulse with body-rocking sobs at the realization that you just hoped or prayed for your own baby to die. That's as real as it gets, folks. And I don't feel good about admitting it publicly, but the reality is that this thing takes you to some deep, dark places.

In my experience, your gut reaction is to push away - to keep the entire situation at arms' length. To try desperately to forget that you were ever excited for this baby, that you ever wanted her, that you ever loved her. If you can just treat this like "a pregnancy" rather than "a baby", be pragmatic about it, just live it out 'til it's over, you won't have to feel it. I'm quite sure that all of that is a natural self-defense mechanism, and thank God it only took me two or three days to move beyond that stage, but it was so real and raw and ugly.

I wasn't even sure that I wanted to name her. We had a girl name picked out weeks before the sonogram, but I couldn't bring myself to call her that. The situation had changed - she wasn't the little girl that I was going to raise, that I had imagined. It just didn't fit anymore. And I felt terrible about that - that I couldn't bring myself to use that name that we had loved and been excited for. We ultimately decided on a special name for her (or perhaps God decided). It came to me far more quickly and naturally than all the hemming and hawing and list-making we had gone through to come up with other names. Her name is Grace. It just is. No question in my mind now, but initially it was a major source of guilt for me.

Naming her was also a big step toward accepting this reality and accepting what she would be to us. Naming her meant letting her in - giving her an identity and a place in our hearts. Allowing ourselves to embrace her as our daughter. Let me tell you, that's no easy task. My "maternal instincts" did not make it any easier. Initially, there was almost nothing inside of me driving me to love her. Letting her in, embracing her, loving her... that's easy to do when you know that you will soon meet her, snuggle her, look into her eyes and see beautiful new life behind them, watch her grow, and spend a lifetime getting to know her. When all of that is ripped out from beneath you, you don't even know how to think about her anymore. When suddenly you are no longer anticipating any of that, and all you'll have is a (potentially rocky) pregnancy followed by a heartbreaking, soul-shattering delivery and a few hours to say goodbye to your already still child... all of the excitement and anticipation is replaced by grief and fear and sadness and worry. As it was I had never quite allowed myself to get all that excited about this pregnancy. I'd had weeks of spotting during my first trimester and had attributed my lack of enthusiasm to that, but maybe part of me just knew that something was wrong. I don't know. I had hoped that seeing a fully-formed baby that day, learning the sex and picking out a name would allow me to begin to bond and connect to this baby the way I remembered having done with my first. But when the news came and I was already less-than-attached, it was far too easy for me to turn and run in the opposite direction.

I praise God daily, sometimes hourly, for bringing me the kind of peace that He promises - the kind that "transcends all understanding" (and surely, it does) - which has allowed me to settle into this reality and return to my role as her mother. There is nothing I have loved more in this life than being a mother. It is my favorite thing about being alive. I wanted so desperately to be her mom, and initially I just felt that I was being robbed of that. But the past week has brought me to a new perspective. I feel more like her mommy now than at any point in this pregnancy, when initially I thought I wanted to run and hide. When initially all I wanted was for this to end, now I hope for more days with her, to reach more milestones, that she'll hang around long enough for Ben to feel her move in my belly. At first I just wanted this to end so that we could forget and move on, but now I spend my days coming up with ways to remember her, little things to make her "birthday" special, photo poses I want to capture after she's born. At first I didn't even want to name her, much less hold her, but now I'm having her name stitched onto blankets and stamped into jewelry, and sometimes quietly praying for a miracle - that perhaps against all the odds she'll be born alive, if only for a few moments, so that she'll feel our kisses on her cheeks at least once, and know on some level that we desperately love her.

I can't tell you how or why I've arrived at this place - I can only tell you that none of this has happened of my own strength or will or courage. It is beyond my human capacity. I'm just so thankful that the God we serve is such an awesome and powerful God. Overcoming this kind of devastation is no big deal for Him. He quickly and quietly picked up the pieces of my shattered heart, rearranged them, and left me with the new kind of "mother's heart" that I needed. Some days are better than others, but I have been so surprised at how easy it is already becoming to handle the reminders. I can smile and thank strangers and patients who congratulate me and wish me "good luck with the baby". I still feel a swell of joy when I listen to her heart beat with our fetal doppler, despite the reality that I'm checking to make sure that my baby is still alive. I can walk back and forth past the soft fluffy blanket that I bought for her burial (which is still sitting in the stairwell for whatever reason!) 10 times a day without feeling overwhelmed with sadness. Sometimes I cry, and sometimes I do feel that overwhelming sadness creeping in, but mostly I'm just grateful. I never thought I'd be able to say that, but I am. I'm grateful to have this opportunity to be a mommy again, to be her mommy, to protect her and give her little soul a home for however brief a time, to celebrate her and remember her, to learn and grow from this experience.

I don't ask "why", because it truly doesn't matter to me. There is no good reason for my baby girl to die. I know that. But I also know that God uses whatever tragedies do occur in this fallen world to further His purpose and to draw us closer to Him, and somehow I'm ok with accepting that.

Gracie at 20 weeks, 2 days