My take on the world.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Remembering

Well, it's been 3 months today.

Three months ago today, I woke up around 3:30 AM in pain.  Bad pain.  I hurried into the bathroom, already fighting back tears, hoping I was being over-worried, that I was wrong.  Then I saw it.

If you had asked me before that second, "What's the worst moment of your life?", I would've had to think about it.  Now, I wouldn't hesitate.  The worst moment of my life was when I looked down and saw blood, and knew that my baby was gone.  That knowledge slammed into me with such force, crushing breath and and tears and hope.  I stood as if paralyzed, but I wasn't numb.  The sheer weight of it all froze me into place.

But, like all other moments, this one passed.  I hurried to wake up my husband.  I could barely get out the words,  "I'm bleeding."  I called my OB's office and got the doctor on call.  He was very calm, but he knew there was nothing to be done.  I already had an appointment at 9 that morning--it was supposed to be my first ultrasound.  As long as the pain was manageable, and I wasn't bleeding too heavily, he advised me to wait until then.  We called our parents, and Matt ran to QuikTrip to get some things for me.

When Matt got back, we sat on the bed and sobbed.  Matt prayed, "God... remember us."  That's all he could say.  We dozed off and on between 5 and 7, when we got up and headed to the hospital for my appointment.

When we arrived, we were greeted cheerfully by the doctor's assistant.  We quickly found out that the doctor on call had not notified my doctor about our situation at all.  We were taken back to a room where an ultrasound tech half-listened to my explanations.  She dismissed my concerns as if I wasn't smart enough to know what bleeding and cramps were.  (In retrospect, I think she may have thought this would calm me down.  It only served to infuriate me.)  When she did the ultrasound, she seemed surprised.  "Oh... You ARE bleeding heavily."  I wanted to scream, "NO SH*T, SHERLOCK!", but my good-little-church-girl self kept me silent, and I settled for a glare.  The tech said there wasn't a gestational sac, and after I changed, Matt and I were ushered into another room to talk to my OB.

My worst fears having been confirmed, I grew much calmer.  My husband, however, couldn't stop weeping.  As I held his face in my hands, he confessed that all along he'd been hoping that the ultrasound would show our baby, still doing fine.  He cried as we talked to the OB, and as the doctor's assistant ushered us down a back hallway so that we wouldn't have to walk back through the waiting room full of expectant mothers.  He cried as we walked all the way out to the car, and when we got in he couldn't drive for at least 10 minutes. (Although several people told me it would be otherwise, my husband grieved over this every bit as much as I did.  Honestly, most days I thought he grieved more.)

We spent the rest of the day wandering around the Zona Rosa shopping area together, and had Chick-fil-A for dinner.  Even though I was in pain, I really wanted to be around people, not shut up in our apartment any more.  My mom and Granny drove up from OKC the next day.  I was in a lot more pain the second day--I couldn't even get off the couch.  My fantastic husband spent the whole morning cleaning our apartment for me, and my mom and Granny brought ice cream with them.  The next day, I went to use the bathroom.  I happened to look down, and... I saw my baby.  It was the size of a chocolate chip, just like my pregnancy app said it should be at 7 weeks.  I texted Matt to come in there with me.  Neither of us knew what to do.  So we flushed the toilet.  I wish we hadn't--I kept picturing my baby in a sewer for days afterwards.

I went through my miscarriage feeling like I should get mad at God at some point.  The truth is, I never did.  Honestly, I knew more than ever how good He is.  I knew He could've changed this, that He could've saved my baby, and yet I never doubted His complete and utter GOODNESS.  I know that sounds crazy.  But it's just how it was.  Several people told me how godly my response to all of this was.  That frustrated me, because I wasn't trying to be godly.  It was just that I KNEW, beyond any doubt, that God was/is unfathomably GOOD.  I can't explain it any better than that.

Although I was really hoping for a boy, Matt and I both have a strong feeling that this baby was a girl.  As the weeks have gone by, I've found myself thinking of her as our sweet baby Remember.  Because we will always remember her, and we know that God always remembers us.  When the Bible talks about God "remembering" someone, it's not because He forgot them.  His remembrance is the fulfillment of a promise.  God will not forget my baby.  He is not done with her, and he isn't done with us either.

When we announced our pregnancy, one of my good friends texted me, "...You're bringing someone into this world that will live eternally.  So y'all just added some eternal value to this world.  How cool. Right?"  I LOVE that.  Even though we never got to meet her, our baby is alive right now.  And we will meet that precious soul one of these days--the day when all wrongs are made right, when all things are redeemed.  And we will know that, yet again, God has remembered us.