By Andrea Kenny
Miscarriage. That word. It’s so hard to wrap your brain around, until it happens to you. Everyone has heard the statistic, one in four. One out of every four pregnancies ends in miscarriage. That doesn’t sound so bad, until you are the one, left with empty arms and an aching heart.
We have never had an easy road when it comes to fertility, doing everything that the Catholic Church allows just to achieve a pregnancy in the first place. Years of charting, and planning, and ultrasounds, and medication. Each one of these precious souls have been hard fought for, which makes the idea of miscarriage all the more jarring.
I have attempted to understand and comfort friends throughout the years who have suffered losses, but never truly understood their pain until this last year. We suffered three back to back miscarriages in 2019, and I finally begun to understand being open to life also meant being open to death, pain, heartache and loss. It also gave me a glimpse of Calvary, of Mary’s pain, and the hope that awaits me at the Resurrection.
Our first miscarriage was May of 2019 and it completely knocked the wind out of me. I had to have surgery and I was numb and angry at the world. How could everything and everyone keep going while my baby was gone?! How could God allow this to happen? What was wrong with me? Day by day things got less painful and we continued to be open to life.
Our second miscarriage was August of 2019. This one didn’t hit me as hard, probably because I didn’t need to have surgery, didn’t have a baby to bury, and was angry that this happened again. Life got back to normal pretty quickly and I just kept going. I found a few good Catholic books on miscarriage and tried to take life a day at a time.
Our third miscarriage in December of 2019 was devastating. We saw her heartbeat three times on ultrasound before we saw it stop. We had announced to family and friends and we’re finally starting to get excited about a baby in our arms, and not another burial to plan. Then our joy was crushed. The surgery was hard, and my recovery was even harder. Announcing our saint in Heaven just two weeks after announcing that we were expecting her, I was numb. The burial fit my aching heart, January in Minnesota.
Loss is hard to process. We have no guarantees in this life. We want to have answers because then we feel we can fix things, control things. But even when we do everything right, things can still go wrong. A heartbeat isn’t a guarantee, an ultrasound isn’t a guarantee, a positive test isn’t a guarantee. It’s in God’s hands as the Author of Life and we have to trust His Will, even if we don’t have answers this side of Heaven. For us, it is important for another precious soul to have existed, no matter how long they are here with us, then not at all.
Where there is sorrow there is always hope. Through testing after my losses I was able to discover a clotting disorder that was never found before. My desire for Heaven has never been stronger because I have Hope Gerard, Joseph Elizabeth, and Jaclyn Marie waiting for me.
Another ray of hope is that we are expecting again, and with the knowledge gained from my losses, can hopefully lead to a successful delivery early in the new year. There are no certainties, and I thank God for each day that I am still pregnant. There is light even in the darkest moments and there is hope even through tears and heartache.