It’s funny how grief tends to bury itself in the recesses of one’s mind until it literally rises from the dead at some point and resurrects through the experience of others. 

I did not know how traumatized I was when I lost a baby in 1993 through miscarriage, or what my doctor termed as a “spontaneous abortion,” until a friend recanted his wife’s similar experience to me. The hurt and denial of the past sprung back to the present rather quickly as if it was happening to me all over again.

My husband and I couldn’t have been happier when we found out we were pregnant with our second child. Our firstborn baby girl brought such delight and fulfillment into our lives that we pictured having a second blessing as truly a dream come true.
Having gone through pregnancy the first time, I pretty much knew what to expect.  The only thing unusual about this one was that I started spotting. My doctor assured me this was a normal occurrence and referred to it as “old blood from the previous pregnancy.” I took her word for it and vowed to take care of myself and get plenty of rest. 

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Unfortunately, no matter what I did, the spotting did not stop and actually worsened. I woke up early one morning and what was left of my baby fell onto my hands while I used the bathroom. I placed the tissue-like gray sac on a pan. My husband and I then took the seemingly long and silent drive to the hospital.

It was probably one of the saddest days in my life. The hospital confirmed what I already knew. We had lost the baby 10 weeks in utero. As I waited in the emergency room, I couldn’t help but stare at the lump of tissue on a pan that was my baby. The blinding tears that filled my face hid the shock and despair as we suffered a devastating loss.

I spent the days that followed in isolation. Never wanting to go out of the bedroom.  Not wanting to talk to anyone except to my husband and daughter. That too, took a 
a lot out of me. Although suffering from his own grief, it took the courage and authoritative prompting of my husband to make me get out of bed one day and walk out of the room. He reminded me that life must go on and there was one little person (my daughter) who was missing her mother.

My daughter’s face broke into a smile when she saw me, and I immediately carried and cuddled her in my arms. I did not realize how much I had missed her. She turned to me and asked, “What happened to the baby?” 

I held back my tears and told her the baby was not ready to be born yet. and so had to go back to Heaven. She then asked, “Is the baby coming back?” I just smiled at her and that was all the answer she needed.

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Six months after our traumatic experience, we got pregnant again. This time, we eventually gave birth to a beautiful and healthy baby boy. When my daughter saw her brother for the first time, she looked at me with a twinkle in her eyes and said, “He came back!”

Going through the aftermath of a miscarriage is hard on everyone, but more so for the mother who carried the baby in her womb. As women from all over who went through the same experience might profess, it is indeed, life-long mourning.

To me, my baby was more than a fetus or lump of tissue, but someone whose heartbeat synchronized to mine and whose presence I felt even right from the beginning. Since it was early on in the pregnancy, there was no hand to hold, hair to stroke, or even a little body to hug to fill the final goodbye. Let’s just say, it was more like future anticipation, some deep-set longing in my heart that one day I will finally meet the baby I lost even if I have to wait until the afterlife.