Mara Elidi

This is a first trimester birth story, the story of my fourth child.
I give this as both an opening and a caution, because parts of this story may trigger anxiety especially for those who are currently pregnant or have experienced miscarriage at home. There are also physically graphic parts to this story to describe the events following my miscarriage.

On May 1st, after 9 months of trying to conceive, a little help from letrozole, and a cross-country move... we learned I was pregnant.
That day and the weeks that followed were full of anxiety but also of intentional faith and thankfulness. Nausea, headaches, tenderness, fatigue, and emotional instability all made me so happy to feel. Knowing I feared attaching to this baby, I attached anyway. We took advantage of BabiesRUs going out of business and bought a bassinet and swing. We were requesting Ryan be placed in follow on courses so I could deliver here before we move again. We were speaking like we would bring a living baby home in January. It was pure joy every time we saw a heartbeat on the sonogram screen. 

Today, it has been one whole month since her birthday. Since we held her and kissed her and smelled her. I was 13 weeks pregnant when I had her at home. 

At 12 weeks 5 days (and the day after the 3rd anniversary of Eden's funeral), I went to the ER. I was having abdominal and back pain with little relief and felt something was not right. I told my husband he didn't need to come, because I had hoped I was just being worried. Pregnancy after loss after loss after loss can make someone feel like they've gone insane with worry and assumption that they are no longer carrying life.
He went to work, and I headed to the hospital. They'd seen me there four times already, for pneumonia once and three times for fear that something was wrong. This time, something was. 

A quick note about my experience in the ER this time- it was terrible. It was cold, cruel, and rude. No one would speak to me during the ultrasound. They all spoke over me and addressed each other without answering my questions or requests to see my baby. I knew, and no one would tell me. There was time between the scan and the nurse practitioner coming in for me to call and tell Ryan he needed to be there, for him to drive all the way from post to downtown, park, and come in to calm me down. I still held hope that I was being silly, because surely someone would have come in by then. The nurse practitioner smelled like cigarettes, because she took a smoke break and discharged me before she came in to tell my that my baby had died. She shrugged her shoulders when she said it. We were rushed away on a day that they'd already told us they weren't busy. It was gross. My experience with my Baby Errol at 6 weeks was exponentially more gentle. When I feel comfortable, I'm going to write a letter and take some doula materials up there, to show them the importance of kindness and bedside manners during bereavement. I hate that so many mothers find themselves in this kind of experience when their babies die before 20 weeks.

That afternoon, I was able to see my OB doctor. He came in compassionately and sat with me, laying my options on the table: wait and let the miscarriage begin naturally, have a D&C, or take the induction medication at home.
My decision was based on past experiences. Mason had been gone over a week before I found out, and it was almost two weeks by the time I was induced. I couldn't bear to wait for my body to take it's course, as it was betraying me even in that moment. Secondly, I wanted to avoid the sadness and lack of closure I had with Baby Errol. I knew I had passed him. I saw him in a tiny sac, in my toilet, and I flushed my baby. I wanted to see, hold, and kiss my baby. A D&C would not allow for that. I chose the induction at home. 

This happened on a Tuesday, and we wanted to prepare and spend the time we had with her as well as the immediate time after without rushing, worrying over work or anything else. We chose Friday morning as a time to start the medicine, understanding I could take up to 24 hours of the medicine (cytotec) before a D&C would be the next step.
The days between gave us time to prepare for a "home birth". We bought little blankets, a new nightgown, a box to stain and carry her in. We chose a jasmine and wild orange oil blend for her scent memory. I took self portraits with her inside me. Ryan made arrangements for cremation at the funeral home. We prayed over the coming days. We named her. 

Mara was a character in the Bible, Ruth's mother in-law. Her name was Naomi until she changed it when her sons and husband died, declaring that the Lord had dealt bitterly with her. It felt appropriate that week. I prayed candidly, telling God that I was confused and bitter. Yet, I was so thankful. From the moment we had a positive pregnancy test, we referred to this baby as "Baby Sunny". She came when we moved away from the gray skies found the literal sunshine. We found the name Elidi, which means gift of the sun. Together, these names fit our girl perfectly.

Friday morning was spent quietly listening to music and crocheting two tiny blankets (one for her, one for us) from the one I started the day Ryan returned from deployment and we began trying to conceive. Ryan came home around noon, and the quiet labor began to pick up. I laid on a heating pad and sipped tea. The waiting was peaceful, the pain had a purpose. It was a centered and spiritual experience.

In the afternoon, I felt my water "break". I had no bleeding before this point. Things happened quickly afterward.

• 
  

On July 6th at 4:19 pm, our sweet baby was born to me in the bathroom, by the yellow bathtub.

That familiar silence was so loud.

• 
  

I caught her, called Ryan in, and rinsed her off gently. 

We took her in the kitchen, where we had flowers and candles and her blankets near her box.

We took pictures of her alone and with each of us. I heard myself keep repeating, "Oh, she's just so cute!" because she was really cute and I was just in awe. Her face looked to be smiling, her hands together, her legs folded. This was the first time any of my babies has been outside of me and still inside my home. The dogs stayed close by, curious and gentle. It's so special to me that it happened this way, truly a generous answer to prayer that I just wanted to hold my child.

It wasn't long after that when we tucked her into her blanket and the box we picked just for her, then took her to the funeral home.
In the car before we went inside, my precious husband blessed our baby. We're probably not "qualified" for this but nonetheless we felt the presence of Jesus in the front seat of my Kia. He dedicated Mara to the Lord, we cried, and carried her inside.

When we left I began bleeding heavily, through my pants into the car seat. Ryan rushed me home and the bleeding kept picking up. I wanted to seem okay physically, and we were both hungry from not eating all day. So I sent him to get supper. I started getting dizzy, wondering how much water I'd really had through the whole process.

He walked back in the door 20 minutes later with Chick-fil-A, which has been our "after baby" meal every time. I simultaneously walked back into the bathroom to change the chux pad I had been cutting to fit. The next thing I knew I was nearly fainting, sitting on the toilet with Ryan running towards me and yelling to keep me alert. I then drifted off, I couldn't see at all and I could only hear myself sobbing, overcome with what had happened hours earlier. I don't remember anything else- how I got up, cleaned up, or got to the couch where I had a wet washcloth on my head and was being fed and given water when I finally came to. Once I ate and drank a few more cups of water, I fell asleep and slept through the night. The next few days were a blur of crying, sleeping and watching mindless television.

The following Monday I went in for a follow up, but when I explained that I was still bleeding, my OB was concerned that the miscarriage wasn't complete. The ultrasound showed that some placenta tissue was left behind, and the next course of action was to take a "less intense" version of the induction medication, this was called Methergine. It was familiar to me because I had taken it in the shot form for retained placenta after Mase, before my D&C. I didn't remember anything about it because I had an epidural. The problem was, for THREE days, my pharmacy nor any pharmacy in town had it and needed to order it. When I finally started it, I realized that it was not less intense by any definition. 

I had every non-life threatening side effect, the worst being the back and abdomen pain. 

I writhed on the couch for three days. I have never felt that kind of pain before. I didn't sleep, couldn't eat, just cried and moaned while my uterus was being forcefully emptied. I was passing huge clots like the night she was born during the entire time. I passed the little placenta on day two. 
Also on the second day, before Ryan left for work (he wasn't able to miss class without being reset) I asked him to call the doctor and tell him I just wanted a D&C now. Helpless, he got on the floor beside me and held me. I'll always remember what he said that morning: "You have done the hardest thing you'll ever do, four times now. You've already survived something that doesn't make sense to survive. You can do this, you know you can." He said it, knowing that at this point, a D&C would not reverse or prevent the pain I would continue to feel from the medicine. It was already started and would continue even if I skipped the rest of the doses. There was no sense in getting the surgery. It would have not made it better, simply worse. Yet, he did not say that. He was being a doula to me, and gave encouragement instead of presenting the wall even I knew was there in my right mind. 

I finished the doses and the pain subsided with a little residual soreness. I finally stopped bleeding a few days ago.

At the end of that first week, our baby's urn had arrived. At the funeral home, Ryan transferred her ashes into the urn carefully as I watched. We brought her home and placed her on the mantle, next to her brother. I have matching urns for two of my babies now. 

I wanted to go to SC for my sister's wedding shower and planning this month, and the pain went away just in time. I even took a little detour on the way back home to spend a few nights in Helen, GA and be alone. Two weeks in, I had not yet grasped that my baby was gone. I was focused on physically trying to heal that I  blocked myself from grieving properly. It was a completely traumatic month for my body. My time alone was to force myself to understand and begin to grieve, and I'm not sure it even worked then, because the emotion and clarity is just starting to sink in.

The commotion has now gone away. The calls and cards and flowers come in the early days, and we are so thankful for the immediate answer of love and support to our hurt. We know we are cared for.
But it's always especially quiet when the hard days actually start. And a month later, as I begin to understand what's happened, it feels very lonely. Maybe even lonelier this time than any time before. I feel people have grown tired of this. I know I have. I wish my daughter were here, living inside me. I wish they were all here and this was a stupid mom blog about fun summer activities when you're pregnant with three more under four. 

That's not true, though. The truth is my baby died, again. I know its hard, what is there to say? Nothing. There never has been a script I could hand someone and, damn, aren't we all so exhausted of this happening? I know it takes energy to support a mom who has lost her baby, I've gotten so much of it over the past three years. Now I'm adjusting expectations of others and of myself so I can be gentle with us both. I'm in a place of fresh grief for the first time in two years, and I'm thankful for this "business break" I've been taking so it can be my sole focus. This is all so familiar and foreign at the same time, and I'm going to take my time navigating it. The start for me was writing Mara's story today, writing my story of my sweet fourth baby. Now I'll be reading it back to myself until it doesn't sound like someone else's anymore. 

"For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far 

outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

2 Corinthians 4:17-18

Gentle Christmas, Darling.

How are we spending our fifth Christmas together this week?
In our fourth home?
Wrapping up our third year of marriage?
Spending our second major holiday away from any family?
Our first Christmas without our baby girl?

I have to thank you for everything you've given me this year.

A gorgeous daughter.
Words of reassurance, notes of encouragement.
Time, as much as you have had.
Support and solidarity.
Attention and affection.
Intimacy and intention.
Fierce love to me and to our child.
The arms you've wrapped around me in the moments I've been most inconsolable.
The eyes that have cried with mine.
The hands you held mine in on the best days and the hardest days of my life- consequently the best and hardest days of yours.

There's so much more. You are a good man and a good husband and a good father, and it isn't fair how many times a day I fail you as a wife that you are still all of these things. You are constant. I am moved every moment that God has given me you.

But I know that this year has been hard. The most trying of our whole lives, let alone the nine years we have known each other. I hope that it's the hardest we ever do have. That we will be able to look back on it and say, "Yep, that was easily the worst thing we've ever gone through".

We've lived a whole six months without our precious Eden. How did we ever live before her? I know you miss her every moment.

We've lost treasured relationships with family and friends. We've walked through more loss with new friends. We've started to endure "firsts" that are so different inside our own circumstance of parenting. We have argued and pulled away from each other and whispered hoarse sorry's in a dark bedroom. We have turned volumes up on televisions and radios to drown out the quietness that a child's cries and giggles should fill.

We have had to learn to be gentle with ourselves, because the world has stopped being so gentle with us. It took three months for others to try and judge this pain or dictate our grief. It took five for us to decide our grief isn't about them.

We have had to unsettle and move and settle again.

We haven't been able to even think about attending church.

Social anxiety.

Depression.

Life keeps going, and our hearts are just broken.


So, I won't tell you Merry Christmas. It's not merry. You know better than I can say, we aren't too jolly. And that is okay. We do not have to put on a happy face for each other. We can be real. There are much too few gifts under the tree that we forced ourselves to put up and there are stockings we didn't even bother to hang. We've turned off carols and only attempted traditional movies.

But, as you have constantly reminded me this year, there is still good. If it cannot be merry, it can be good. And it is.

We grew a baby together this year. Her daddy's twin, actually. And she was born. And we held her. And she breathed. And she stopped breathing. And it was so peaceful and beautiful and it aches in my bones but damn, I'd do it over every day to see the way you looked at her again. We met our very prayed for Eden girl. We're the parents of a very special kid that makes a difference even today.

We also grew our marriage. You proposed to me three years ago on Christmas Eve. And when I said yes, I never imagined "for better or for worse" would happen at the same time. What a test of our love and our commitment and our faith?! I could not be more glad that I am your wife and get to do this beautiful and painful thing with you.

I am so proud of us. Our family is proud of us. Our kiddo is proud of us. Gold star for us.

We have figured out new ways to honor her and ways to take care of ourselves. We have become better individuals.
That I can not know who I am and also be so sure of who I am and be okay with it... that makes me a new woman, whatever I am. And I believe that I've somehow become a better wife, as I know I must first take care of myself before I can take care of you.
Then, that you can find peace in your identity so quickly in whatever situation... that even as you change you are a constant for me.

We got out of town. We did something for ourselves and went away. The guilt, oh the initial guilt of the genuine enjoyment inside unending grief is so real. But, it was good for us. And it was for us and no one else, which is the best part. To be alone, together, and away is one of the best and most healthy things we could have done for ourselves this time of year. To see your smile is the sweetest thing.

Then, we have these people. All of these amazing people. Strangers and blood and everything in between. They wake up thinking of us, they go to bed thinking of us. They cover us in prayer and tell us that WHATEVER is right for us is the only right. People that remind us that we are loved.
They bless us daily and they say her name.

We are favored.
I've felt so close to Mary and Joseph this month. I'm reminded there are no mistakes, that even when choosing who will parent our children, God fearfully pieces the fabric of our lives together.
Thanks to the Son they were chosen to carry and raise, the Son we quietly, mournfully celebrate this week... We are forgiven and will be as blameless as our perfect child on the day we get to meet her again and spend eternity in His presence.


When we are looking back and calling this the worst thing we've been through... I believe we will also call it the best, the most real, and the part of our lives where our blessings were most evident.


No, I cannot wish you a merry Christmas this year, my handsome man.
But I can and will wish you a gentle one.
I can only hope that your heart is quieted and that your mind is eased. That together, we can just breathe and make it through. That we can remember all we have to be thankful for.
That even in this empty ache, we are filled to the brim with peace.

I love you more than I loved you yesterday, but not as much as I'll love you tomorrow.

The Love of a Quietly Grieving Man

I am convinced that I am a magnet for rude comments.

If there is someone who will say the wrong thing, I will meet them.


She was thinning out my hair about a month ago- ripping some final remnants of the Eden hormones from my head. She was telling me what a mane it was, asking why I let it get so thick and unmanageable. She was abusing my confidence, assuming self care is nothing to me. She said there was no wonder I kept having headaches. My hair was ridiculous. It went on and on for about ten minutes, through the wash, the initial trim, and into the middle of shearing my scalp.

"It's usually not like this," I said. "I mean, it has always been pretty thick, but this is mostly the accumulation from all my prenatals."

"Well, no excuses missy. You have to take care of this stuff. How old is your youngest?"

Finally, ready to snap, I carefully said, "She's just a few minutes old forever. She's in Heaven. If you're asking how long its been since I've taken the vitamins, its been almost two months."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

A few moments of peace and quiet... then, backtracking.

"Was she your first?" Yes.
"Did you name her?" Eden.
"Do you have a picture?" Here.

"That is sad. But on the bright side...."
Oh God.
"On the bright side, you and your husband now have a little more time to just enjoy each other without kids getting in the way."

"I mean, I guess?"

"Yeah! You're young! Have fun! When your first kid comes, a man just turns into another child. You'll have your hands too full. Enjoy him as a man before you have to become his mom."

And all the other women's faces in the hair salon wore shocked brows and gaped mouths. I saw them in the mirror as my face turned deep red and I looked down to hide the tears spilling from my eyes.

"Well, I don't think so. I know my husband will be more than eager to help me parent our children. He was eager to be a daddy to her."

"You'll see. But who knows, maybe he'll be a good father one day All men are different right? Okay! All done. Feel better?"
No. Get me out of here.


I am a magnet.



-She was right about our age. We are young. We do have time to build our family. But we already started. This isn't a blessing in disguise- Eden was a very wanted baby: waited for, planned for, and prayed for. We are young, but we decided together that we were ready to be parents.

-When our next child comes, it will not be called our first child! We already have one! This time now is not "before we have children". That time was over a year ago. This time is the time between our first daughter that died and her siblings.

-"Maybe he'll be a good father one day."
Ryan will not be a good father one day. Ryan is an excellent father now. Just like me, he loves his daughter and dreams of her and talks about her and talks to her and misses her.

I wish I had told her what its really like in my house- I wish I'd told her what it's like to be a grieving mother living in close proximity with a grieving father.

I wish I had told her that I'm not worried about ever having to take care of Ryan.

I'll gladly pick up after him while I'm picking up after our babies. Because most days lately he has to pick up after me. The wife that used to wash, dry, fold, and put away all the laundry in one day now leaves a load in the washer that he restarts...then restarts again the next day after I tell him to leave it alone, I'll take care of it.

I can handle a man that acts like a child, because with that thought I picture him in the floor wrestling our kiddos, making them laugh the way he still works so tirelessly to make me laugh on days that I've done nothing but cry.

I will smile on the days when I've packed his lunch along with the lunches of our babes, remembering that in this season there are some days he goes without lunch at all because I haven't cooked all week to send leftovers and theres not time for him to grab take-out.

When he sleeps in on weekends and I am up early with the cartoons, I will remember now, when he is coming home half the days in a week to find I have not moved from the couch, the dogs have not been fed, and the blinds are still drawn.

I am not afraid of taking care of Ryan, I owe him for taking care of me. We get to take turns caring for one another. That's my observation in this season. We will just alternate picking each other up, though I haven't quite mastered the part where I pick him up and its been more of his responsibility than mine.
I don't anticipate having a man-child that cannot care for himself because that's not anything like this man I'm married to, but in the event I do for a while... well thats ok because he has been caring for this woman-child when I couldn't care for myself. Thats what marriage is: taking turns.
It's tough to describe what else our marriage is right now. I can say that his love is a few things.

It's knowing not to mention my new gray hairs when I start picking on his.

It's noticing that my brain is mush when I tell him to take the trash out since the truck will come tomorrow even though he knows it won't come for another three days, smiling, nodding, and taking the trash and recycling bins to the road anyway.

It's looking at me when the mixed company starts talking about parenting struggles and our eyes doing the communication: "you ready?"... "let's go."

It's embarrassing himself at any cost to make me smile and feeling like a king when I've laughed.

It's patiently waiting for me to get done telling him that I don't know why he isn't breaking down the way I am.

It's reminding me that we are both feeling the same pain but reacting to it in different ways.

It's approaching each subject carefully, but being adamant that there is no tip-toeing around each other- it's encouraging me to be gentle but real.

It's getting up in the morning with a heart as broken as mine and going to work and dealing with the world and coming home to screen the mail and changing the channel when a Pampers commercial comes on and making sure I really want to see the Pixar movies in public and giving me space when I need it but never leaving me alone.

It's tears and it's smiles and it's happy and it's sad and it's wild and it's mundane and it's neat and it's messy.

My husband has never been one for showing himself. He celebrates quietly, he mourns even more quietly. It is so difficult for me to accept that his grief isn't loud like mine. It doesn't scream. You can read it all over his face and see it in his eyes, but it doesn't often come out of his mouth. I have had a really hard time being ok with this:

"Are you not sad?"

I always think that I have to remind him that we have a dead baby. I don't have to remind him. He knows it every second of every day the same way I know it. He is living it in the same time I live it.
He never asks me to stop being so vocal and visible about my brokenness, so I don't know why I keep asking him to make a display about his.
Perhaps the way I can take care of him right now is to allow him to act however he needs to act without the demands of "normal behavior for the grieving", without the demands that he meets my grief criteria. Perhaps I can take care of him by giving him the grace he continuously puts into me: "It's okay. How you are feeling and how you are acting and what you are thinking.. it's all okay."

In the months following the birth and death of our child, I realize why the divorce rate among bereaved parents is so high. It's hard for two people hurting so badly to do life together so closely and not say things that just hurt each other more. Had we not had a semi-developed relationship before this, had we not worked steadily and intently on communication and patience before I got pregnant, we may not have walked in on this new normal with much of a chance.

But now when more children come, we will be husband and wife that have walked through the Refiner's Fire and we will be mother and father united to parent all of our babies. I will not ever become my husband's mom. I'm his wife and the luckiest one there ever was to be taken care of by him and to take care of him the way that spouses do.

My prayer is that I can learn to accept the love of this man in his quiet grief and not try to change how he acts. My prayer is that I will stop assuming he is not hurting and start realizing he handles his hurt in different ways from me. My prayer is that we both keep reminding each other that our daughter's life taught us more about our love than her death can tear us apart. And my prayer is also that strangers stop saying stupid things to us.