Processing a miscarriage (part 2)

*Warning:  I don't go into a lot of detail, but I talk briefly about the actual miscarriage in this post.  If you get squeamish about such talk, please don't read.  And I apologize in advance if it's TMI.  I'm selfishly writing this more for myself.


My last post was my surrender to the sovereignty of God and my proclamation of His goodness and presence in the midst of disappointment.

This post is my questions, struggle, and human attempt to understand something confusing, which I know I can't fully understand.  But it's natural, I think, to wrestle and try to make sense of things.
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The actual miscarriage happened at home, thankfully with Matt by my side.

He was great and went into "doctor-mode," monitoring my fluid intake, checking my blood pressure, making me take iron supplements, even cleaning up accidental stains.

I felt badly for him and asked if he was grossed out, as it was startlingly more messy than we anticipated. But he said he's seen far worse these last two years, so he was fine.  He said he just felt "very alert and aware."

The cramps were manageable, and emotionally it wasn't as terrible as I had feared.

In fact, during the actual miscarriage, I felt emotionless.  Numb?  I don't know.  For whatever reasons, my emotions were turned off.

Maybe because a couple of dear friends lost babies further along than I was, I partly didn't feel I had the right to grieve as much as they did.

And with my case being a "blighted ovum," I wondered if my baby, well, existed.

I never saw the baby on the ultrasound.  Never heard a heartbeat.  Just saw an empty sac.

So how do I mourn this?  Do I mourn this?

I'm not seeking validation, just understanding.  I don't know what I'm grieving.

I started wondering if I was cold-hearted and cavalier about the miscarriage since I felt nothing emotionally at the time of it.

But in the days that followed, my mind started thinking things, and my heart started feeling things.  I tend to process events slowly over time.

Since Matt's a med student, I defer to him when it comes to medical knowledge.

"So was a baby in there ever?," I quietly asked him on the couch a couple days later.

"We just don't know," he quietly responded, looking at me with sympathetic eyes.

"So . . . (struggling to understand) . . . tell me about conception . . . How does that work . . . like really work?"

It was like a dad telling his teenager about the birds and the bees, but on a scientific level. Cells this, cells that.

The egg was fertilized - the start of a human life.  But the baby didn't develop much beyond that and never showed up on the screen.

It's possible the baby was reabsorbed into my body (that's a horrible thought) or never got past the "4-cell stage" or the "8-cell stage" as Matt has learned in med school.

4-cell stage?  So did a person exist?  Did its organs form before it all broke down?

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
- Psalm 139:13

But my baby wasn't knit together.  I imagine a ball of yarn and some sticks, but no scarf.  The material was there to make something, but nothing came of it.

It didn't have a face.  How do I think about this??  While I'm a Christian and a pro-lifer, I'm perplexed and seriously seeking, wanting to understand what exactly happened in my body.

I felt like a 6-year-old-child when wondering out loud to Matt if God picks out a person's personality and forms a person's face before it's actually formed.

When does He think of those details of a person?
When does He imbue them with a soul?  Before He forms them in their mother's womb?
As He's forming them?  Before the beginning of time?

Then I thought of that verse in Jeremiah, the one where God knew Jeremiah before He formed him.

I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb.
Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you
as a prophet to the nations.
- Jeremiah 1:5

So does that mean God knew my baby before it was formed (or, rather in this case, wasn't formed)???

This 4 or 8-celled being - Did God have a personality in mind for him/her?
It was a clump of cells at best in me.  Is it a fully formed person in heaven now?  With legs? And arms? And a face? And a personality?  Does it laugh?  And talk?

Will I meet him/her when I get there?
Does he/she have a name?  Is it one I would have chosen?

I tear up at those thoughts and feel a lump in my throat.
All of a sudden, that feels much realer.  Like an actual loss.

Is it melodramatic for me to mourn?
Are my tears justifiable when others are losing their 5-year old children to cancer or car wrecks?
Children they have memories with. ?
Children they've celebrated birthdays with. ?
Children who have personalities.  And faces. ?

I don't know if I'm thinking of this rightly.  It's all mysterious and weird to me.

After reading my last blog post, a mom of one of my students sent me this song yesterday. . . and I wept.

While listening, I felt permission to grieve.

I guess I do have emotions to process and questions to ask.  And I'm glad God doesn't sneer at my childlike, ignorant questions.  I feel heard by Him.  Small and confused.  But loved and heard by Him.