"Broken and Spilled Out" is a title to a song that came out when I was about 3 by a guy named Steve Green. If you're a church kid of the 80's, I bet your parents loved him as much as mine.
This entry isn't really about the song, but it has been on loop in my mind for the last week.
You see, a couple weeks ago we were expecting our second child and now we are not. I've been struggling with the fact that I feel God pressing on me to blog about it. I keep getting this tap on my shoulder and He'd lay a thought on my heart to share. This is just so personal and part of me didn't even want to talk about it with those that are closest to me because it would make it more real. So, I am going to share my experience. The reason I started this blog was to help mothers and those who long to be mothers. Miscarriage is a such a brutal part of motherhood and I am still raw from it.
It's a little graphic, but the theme in my house for the last week and half has been "blood."
We drove up to Dallas for Easter weekend and while we were there, I was having a lot of back pain, but chalked it up to just a lot of running around. I starting feeling crampy, but I had felt that way when I was pregnant with my daughter at the same stage of pregnancy, and just brushed it off...not mentioning it to anyone for fear of speaking what might be happening into truth...like I had any control of that! I can only thank God for letting us celebrate Easter and getting back to Killeen before it all unfolded. I thought I was 9 weeks pregnant and people were still giving us congratulatory hugs and my heart was still soaring. In God's tender mercy, He let us soak up time with people we love and visit our old church, The Village that we love and miss. With Easter comes a lot of soul searching. The songs and message about Christ's gruesome death and glorious resurrection shake me where I stand. I do love Christmas. The hope in that child ... but Easter celebrates the completion of what Christ came to do and reminds me of what sacrifice truly is and how nothing I can do, or will ever have can save me or make me whole. Only Him. The spotless lamb who willingly gave himself up for the glory of His name. The Bloody.Horrific.Tragic.Scandalous.Death on a Cross.Covering sins.
So this man...Jesus...he knows my pain, having bore it.
On the 3 hour drive home, the pain became harder to ignore. I asked God who made me and my baby, who knew my pain, to lift it, and quickly. He would answer that. Just not how I'd hoped. Right before we got home I told Tim I was hurting. Right after we got home I had to tell him I was bleeding. Some texts went out and prayers went up as we went to the hospital late in the afternoon for a blood draw. I would have to wait till the next day to get results and an ultrasound.
A lot of people say that words are futile at time like that, but I was greatly encouraged by my close family and friends. I knew statistics and stories. This was not uncommon. However, I also know myself and the last week or so I had been down. Something had changed and I kept telling myself that it was hormones. I was short-tempered, worrisome, and not myself. I'd look in the mirror and think that my glow was gone then shrug it away. I also couldn't get my step dad out of my mind. He passed a little over 2 years ago and I just kept wondering what he was doing. Wishing he was still here...missing him. I thought I was carrying my baby, but perhaps he was carrying him up on his shoulders in those moments. He liked to do that.
That night I took everyone's advice and just put my feet up. All the while sweating through the fact that part of me knew that come November, I wouldn't be bringing home a soft little baby bundled in a blanket.
Tim and I with our 14 month old daughter waited for what seemed like an eternity to see a doctor. I lay there on the exam table asking for a miracle and God lifted my chin and directed my gaze to my intuitive, stunningly beautiful, healthy, smart, funny miracle. She was staring right at me. "There's one, right there," God said. Tim and I tried 4.5 years for Lily Sue and we got her just when we were supposed to. Sometimes I think in my infinite pride that I was the one who created my daughter. I was the one who got us pregnant naturally...with all my research and striving. It certainly didn't hurt. Those things we implemented were GOOD gifts from God, but it was not me or Tim or herbs or acupuncture. "It's out of your hands," God whispered. Peace rested on me in that moment. The doctor came in and after looking at my blood results, announced with a sweep out of the door that my HCG level was good for 9 weeks and he'd be right back with an ultrasound.
It doesn't matter what a blood test says when an ultrasound shows your baby has no heartbeat. He said dates could be wrong. It may be to early to tell, but the baby measured 7 weeks 4 days and you can see a heartbeat at that point. He scheduled me for another blood draw and ultrasound in the morning, but told me that we should prepare ourselves for a miscarriage. All of a sudden I wanted to be a jerk and say sarcastically, "yeah. ok," with a dry laugh. I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was actually very kind and he made Lily smile so I made it home before I got violent. Tim had to go back to work, Lily wouldn't eat...or nap. While she was fighting a nap, I got in a fight with some mixing bowls in the middle of unloading the dishwasher. Throwing things and cursing didn't help or put life on pause. I had to turn around and pick up the dishes.
The bleeding and pain progressed pretty rapidly in the hour after Tim left. I called him to come home and my mom made her way down. I was laying on our bed, when I heard Tim groan and call out from the living room, "Lily is bleeding!" I threw off my blanket and ran in. She had cut her finger on a wooden crate (we think) and there was blood all over her puzzle pieces and the white sofa. It was such a tiny cut, but she managed to spread it around pretty evenly on the couch. She didn't even know she was hurt. So yeah. Parenting is: and then picture what was happening in my house. I was losing a child and doctoring another. I was bandaging her finger and googling how to get blood out of a white ikea sofa. It worked.
By the time my mom arrived it was pretty evident the blood work and the ultrasound the next day would be a formality. Some might say "Oh ye of little faith!" I knew God could, in any moment bring the bleeding to a halt. The next day I could see my little baby's heartbeat. I knew this could happen. It has for some. I prayed and hoped it would for us. I imagined Tim and I sharing the miraculous story to our future son or daughter. However, who am I to know the future? Who am I to make proclamations about what God was doing? There was only one thing I was certain of. He had it. Whatever the outcome, it was going to be okay.
Tim and I spent the next morning at the hospital. Waiting. If you ever want a taste of what government healthcare is like, go hang out at a hospital on a military installation. That issue is for another day on someone else's blog.
I will not go into details of my physical miscarriage that unfolded during that very long wait. It was my worst nightmare come to life and I was nothing but a broken woman at that point.
To keep my mind from wandering into despair while we sat in the waiting "room" (I use quotes as it's a larger area than the average house, and full of pregnant army wives), I read. I started The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler on Easter weekend and wouldn't you know I picked it back up in a section leading into the depiction of the bloodbath that was animal sacrifice. The law. We humans just can't keep it. We are defenseless without a scapegoat. I had to put it down and ask God, "What's with all the blood?" I just kept reading. It's good.
Once we got to a room and a doctor, my body had almost passed the baby. Another 5 minutes, and I would have lost him in the waiting room. Up until the doctor saying the words, "and you're miscarrying now," I prayed and hoped for this child to hang on in there and not come out till November. It wasn't so and there he (I use "he" only because of grammar rules) was in a plastic cup with a lid. I couldn't really see him through all the tears and all the blood. The nurse carried him out of the room to take him to some lab for some tests that don't matter. I felt panic and regret for letting them carry him away. I had asked beforehand if I could take the baby home and he (a different doctor than the day before) said, "Take it home? There's nothing there." I couldn't even respond at that point.
He left the room for a moment and I told Tim I really wanted to take the baby home. Our baby's life was gone, but his body wasn't. Some mommies can't bear to see it and that's okay. Some mommies don't even know they are passing their baby, it gets flushed away, and that's okay. Some mommies want to take their baby and have a memorial, and that's okay too. It should be offered instead of assumed that we don't mind you carrying off a person we've been carrying in our body. He was not a specimen. He was not "stuff in a cup" as I heard you call him out in the hall. He was knit together by God for some purpose. He didn't get to be in my belly for long, but he is my baby. He didn't have a name but we called him/her "Apple" because it's our daughter's cutest word. Now when she says that word, my throat seizes up.
What I have experienced since that finality has been all over the board, but never anger. I walked out of the hospital under my husband's arm and what must have been a whole herald of angels because I already had flickers of joy and anticipation for the day when I will get to meet the person who was in the body I then carried in my purse.
My mom stayed a few more days and she took me to a nearby nursery to see if they might have an apple tree to bury our baby under. They were all too big and I wanted something we could transplant when we move. We settled on a fitting Sweet Memory tree with bright purple and white blooms and cascading red and orange berries. They attract butterflies and smell like bubble gum.
I will never lose the image of my husband down on his knees in his work gloves spreading soil so gently and smoothly around that big planter. It was so beautiful. My mom held Lily and I took our "Apple" out of the cup and wiped away the blood from the placenta that was still holding everything together (and so FIRMLY!). He looked perfect. He was a whole person at just 7 weeks and 4 days, with little hands and feet and a face. We could see his soft little spine through his see-through skin. I could have looked at him forever in wonder. I had to let him go down into the dirt to nourish the roots of our Sweet Memory. Not many words could be said at our service, other than Tim's "It's our apple tree." That sentence is burned on my heart and I hear it every morning when I open the blinds to look at our tree. I knelt there with bright red blood on my hands clinging to the solid promises of my Savior. My child was His all along. The same God who so carefully and miraculously made him come alive in my womb took him back at the exact moment He intended to.
A few days ago, we gave our very scruffy wirehair dachshund a military haircut. We nicked him a little and after his bath he ran to the living room and unbeknownst to us, began scratching and rubbing his wound all over our white sofa. This time we knew what to do and the stains are washed away again. Kind of a reflection of something, huh? I know you all think I'm insane having a white sofa, but I don't mind the washing because I love a fresh country cottage. That night while I rocked my daughter to sleep I had to ask again, "What's with all the blood?" Immediately, He put these lyrics to a song "Oh Worship the King!" on my lips I hadn't sung in ages:
"Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
Thy mercies, how tender, how firm to the end,
Our maker, defender, redeemer, and friend!"
Life is short. Eternity is long. I, along with every other person am a fragile, breakable being. I can do nothing but let God carry me through the mountains and the valleys till the day, I too am put in the ground.
I thought waiting 18/20 weeks was a long time to find out if Lily Sue was a boy or girl. I don't know how long I will have to wait to find out about Apple (and I pray it's a very long time), but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that whole person who's body is buried in that soil on our patio will be waiting to greet me in Heaven. I'm still jealous and sad that I am not the one who is caring for him, but the One who holds my life and all life, is holding him. What a comfort. What an undeserved miracle of life.
This entry isn't really about the song, but it has been on loop in my mind for the last week.
You see, a couple weeks ago we were expecting our second child and now we are not. I've been struggling with the fact that I feel God pressing on me to blog about it. I keep getting this tap on my shoulder and He'd lay a thought on my heart to share. This is just so personal and part of me didn't even want to talk about it with those that are closest to me because it would make it more real. So, I am going to share my experience. The reason I started this blog was to help mothers and those who long to be mothers. Miscarriage is a such a brutal part of motherhood and I am still raw from it.
It's a little graphic, but the theme in my house for the last week and half has been "blood."
We drove up to Dallas for Easter weekend and while we were there, I was having a lot of back pain, but chalked it up to just a lot of running around. I starting feeling crampy, but I had felt that way when I was pregnant with my daughter at the same stage of pregnancy, and just brushed it off...not mentioning it to anyone for fear of speaking what might be happening into truth...like I had any control of that! I can only thank God for letting us celebrate Easter and getting back to Killeen before it all unfolded. I thought I was 9 weeks pregnant and people were still giving us congratulatory hugs and my heart was still soaring. In God's tender mercy, He let us soak up time with people we love and visit our old church, The Village that we love and miss. With Easter comes a lot of soul searching. The songs and message about Christ's gruesome death and glorious resurrection shake me where I stand. I do love Christmas. The hope in that child ... but Easter celebrates the completion of what Christ came to do and reminds me of what sacrifice truly is and how nothing I can do, or will ever have can save me or make me whole. Only Him. The spotless lamb who willingly gave himself up for the glory of His name. The Bloody.Horrific.Tragic.Scandalous.Death on a Cross.Covering sins.
So this man...Jesus...he knows my pain, having bore it.
On the 3 hour drive home, the pain became harder to ignore. I asked God who made me and my baby, who knew my pain, to lift it, and quickly. He would answer that. Just not how I'd hoped. Right before we got home I told Tim I was hurting. Right after we got home I had to tell him I was bleeding. Some texts went out and prayers went up as we went to the hospital late in the afternoon for a blood draw. I would have to wait till the next day to get results and an ultrasound.
A lot of people say that words are futile at time like that, but I was greatly encouraged by my close family and friends. I knew statistics and stories. This was not uncommon. However, I also know myself and the last week or so I had been down. Something had changed and I kept telling myself that it was hormones. I was short-tempered, worrisome, and not myself. I'd look in the mirror and think that my glow was gone then shrug it away. I also couldn't get my step dad out of my mind. He passed a little over 2 years ago and I just kept wondering what he was doing. Wishing he was still here...missing him. I thought I was carrying my baby, but perhaps he was carrying him up on his shoulders in those moments. He liked to do that.
That night I took everyone's advice and just put my feet up. All the while sweating through the fact that part of me knew that come November, I wouldn't be bringing home a soft little baby bundled in a blanket.
Tim and I with our 14 month old daughter waited for what seemed like an eternity to see a doctor. I lay there on the exam table asking for a miracle and God lifted my chin and directed my gaze to my intuitive, stunningly beautiful, healthy, smart, funny miracle. She was staring right at me. "There's one, right there," God said. Tim and I tried 4.5 years for Lily Sue and we got her just when we were supposed to. Sometimes I think in my infinite pride that I was the one who created my daughter. I was the one who got us pregnant naturally...with all my research and striving. It certainly didn't hurt. Those things we implemented were GOOD gifts from God, but it was not me or Tim or herbs or acupuncture. "It's out of your hands," God whispered. Peace rested on me in that moment. The doctor came in and after looking at my blood results, announced with a sweep out of the door that my HCG level was good for 9 weeks and he'd be right back with an ultrasound.
It doesn't matter what a blood test says when an ultrasound shows your baby has no heartbeat. He said dates could be wrong. It may be to early to tell, but the baby measured 7 weeks 4 days and you can see a heartbeat at that point. He scheduled me for another blood draw and ultrasound in the morning, but told me that we should prepare ourselves for a miscarriage. All of a sudden I wanted to be a jerk and say sarcastically, "yeah. ok," with a dry laugh. I wanted to punch him in the face, but he was actually very kind and he made Lily smile so I made it home before I got violent. Tim had to go back to work, Lily wouldn't eat...or nap. While she was fighting a nap, I got in a fight with some mixing bowls in the middle of unloading the dishwasher. Throwing things and cursing didn't help or put life on pause. I had to turn around and pick up the dishes.
The bleeding and pain progressed pretty rapidly in the hour after Tim left. I called him to come home and my mom made her way down. I was laying on our bed, when I heard Tim groan and call out from the living room, "Lily is bleeding!" I threw off my blanket and ran in. She had cut her finger on a wooden crate (we think) and there was blood all over her puzzle pieces and the white sofa. It was such a tiny cut, but she managed to spread it around pretty evenly on the couch. She didn't even know she was hurt. So yeah. Parenting is: and then picture what was happening in my house. I was losing a child and doctoring another. I was bandaging her finger and googling how to get blood out of a white ikea sofa. It worked.
By the time my mom arrived it was pretty evident the blood work and the ultrasound the next day would be a formality. Some might say "Oh ye of little faith!" I knew God could, in any moment bring the bleeding to a halt. The next day I could see my little baby's heartbeat. I knew this could happen. It has for some. I prayed and hoped it would for us. I imagined Tim and I sharing the miraculous story to our future son or daughter. However, who am I to know the future? Who am I to make proclamations about what God was doing? There was only one thing I was certain of. He had it. Whatever the outcome, it was going to be okay.
Tim and I spent the next morning at the hospital. Waiting. If you ever want a taste of what government healthcare is like, go hang out at a hospital on a military installation. That issue is for another day on someone else's blog.
I will not go into details of my physical miscarriage that unfolded during that very long wait. It was my worst nightmare come to life and I was nothing but a broken woman at that point.
To keep my mind from wandering into despair while we sat in the waiting "room" (I use quotes as it's a larger area than the average house, and full of pregnant army wives), I read. I started The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler on Easter weekend and wouldn't you know I picked it back up in a section leading into the depiction of the bloodbath that was animal sacrifice. The law. We humans just can't keep it. We are defenseless without a scapegoat. I had to put it down and ask God, "What's with all the blood?" I just kept reading. It's good.
Once we got to a room and a doctor, my body had almost passed the baby. Another 5 minutes, and I would have lost him in the waiting room. Up until the doctor saying the words, "and you're miscarrying now," I prayed and hoped for this child to hang on in there and not come out till November. It wasn't so and there he (I use "he" only because of grammar rules) was in a plastic cup with a lid. I couldn't really see him through all the tears and all the blood. The nurse carried him out of the room to take him to some lab for some tests that don't matter. I felt panic and regret for letting them carry him away. I had asked beforehand if I could take the baby home and he (a different doctor than the day before) said, "Take it home? There's nothing there." I couldn't even respond at that point.
He left the room for a moment and I told Tim I really wanted to take the baby home. Our baby's life was gone, but his body wasn't. Some mommies can't bear to see it and that's okay. Some mommies don't even know they are passing their baby, it gets flushed away, and that's okay. Some mommies want to take their baby and have a memorial, and that's okay too. It should be offered instead of assumed that we don't mind you carrying off a person we've been carrying in our body. He was not a specimen. He was not "stuff in a cup" as I heard you call him out in the hall. He was knit together by God for some purpose. He didn't get to be in my belly for long, but he is my baby. He didn't have a name but we called him/her "Apple" because it's our daughter's cutest word. Now when she says that word, my throat seizes up.
What I have experienced since that finality has been all over the board, but never anger. I walked out of the hospital under my husband's arm and what must have been a whole herald of angels because I already had flickers of joy and anticipation for the day when I will get to meet the person who was in the body I then carried in my purse.
My mom stayed a few more days and she took me to a nearby nursery to see if they might have an apple tree to bury our baby under. They were all too big and I wanted something we could transplant when we move. We settled on a fitting Sweet Memory tree with bright purple and white blooms and cascading red and orange berries. They attract butterflies and smell like bubble gum.
I will never lose the image of my husband down on his knees in his work gloves spreading soil so gently and smoothly around that big planter. It was so beautiful. My mom held Lily and I took our "Apple" out of the cup and wiped away the blood from the placenta that was still holding everything together (and so FIRMLY!). He looked perfect. He was a whole person at just 7 weeks and 4 days, with little hands and feet and a face. We could see his soft little spine through his see-through skin. I could have looked at him forever in wonder. I had to let him go down into the dirt to nourish the roots of our Sweet Memory. Not many words could be said at our service, other than Tim's "It's our apple tree." That sentence is burned on my heart and I hear it every morning when I open the blinds to look at our tree. I knelt there with bright red blood on my hands clinging to the solid promises of my Savior. My child was His all along. The same God who so carefully and miraculously made him come alive in my womb took him back at the exact moment He intended to.
A few days ago, we gave our very scruffy wirehair dachshund a military haircut. We nicked him a little and after his bath he ran to the living room and unbeknownst to us, began scratching and rubbing his wound all over our white sofa. This time we knew what to do and the stains are washed away again. Kind of a reflection of something, huh? I know you all think I'm insane having a white sofa, but I don't mind the washing because I love a fresh country cottage. That night while I rocked my daughter to sleep I had to ask again, "What's with all the blood?" Immediately, He put these lyrics to a song "Oh Worship the King!" on my lips I hadn't sung in ages:
"Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
In thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
Thy mercies, how tender, how firm to the end,
Our maker, defender, redeemer, and friend!"
Life is short. Eternity is long. I, along with every other person am a fragile, breakable being. I can do nothing but let God carry me through the mountains and the valleys till the day, I too am put in the ground.
I thought waiting 18/20 weeks was a long time to find out if Lily Sue was a boy or girl. I don't know how long I will have to wait to find out about Apple (and I pray it's a very long time), but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that whole person who's body is buried in that soil on our patio will be waiting to greet me in Heaven. I'm still jealous and sad that I am not the one who is caring for him, but the One who holds my life and all life, is holding him. What a comfort. What an undeserved miracle of life.
