A single mom to three boys working hard to live my truest life. I hope as I share the beauty, the gratitude, the grief, the hard…you find inspiration + hope to show up to your life as honestly as possible.
All in Infertility & Miscarriage
Two of my closest friends recently had their first babies, and I’ll admit, I was nervous about how it was all going to go down. I didn’t know what negative feelings might surface as I was reminded – yet again – that their story would never be my story.
We get to hear from Anna's beautiful heart today.
Losing a baby is a tragic and irrevocable loss, whether via miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss.
Not only is it tragic, but you don't ever forget the trauma and loss. Your baby was a part of you and deserving of his or her space in your life. (S)he moves into your heart, taking up residence as sorrow and grief for the rest of your time on earth.
Irrevocable loss is like that: it creates a sorrow that just sort of moves into you. Sometimes its quiet and unnoticeable, other times its loud and hurts like nothing else.
I was furious, and felt betrayed.
The days unfolded one at a time, slowly and painfully, holding horrors I never imagined experiencing. When doctors warned me of the possibility of miscarriage, I had no idea the toll it would take on me.
I had not the slightest hint of an idea I would be wrecked completely, stripped of my will to keep going. I thought I wasn’t handling infertility and the wait well?
Love once appeared beautiful and whole to me, deep wells that were free and generous, courageous and brave. The caverns of my soul began expanding showing me how to love beyond measure.
When I looked down to see the spots—pink and too bright and red—covering the stark, white soft paper my soul plummeted into the water below me with a splash.
Death is so quick, and grief is the price for such love.
The carpet fibers catching my tears were soaked with salty love poured out.
Month eighteen of trying to conceive had just passed and I was weary of purchasing pregnancy tests, only to pitch them.
I was exhausted from the physical pain of endometriosis. I was worn thin from the emotional pain of waiting.
Waiting.
The reality of life is that we’re all waiting on something. Maybe it's something smaller and less significant. But maybe it's something larger that consumes all your thoughts.
Financial breakthrough. Healing in your body. A baby. Your husband to return. A job.
Scripture discusses the topic of waiting over and over. It also addresses the topic of suffering and facing trials.
A GIVEAWAY AT BOTTOM OF POST
We are on the other side of infertility.
Do I know if I can conceive and carry to term again or if we would experience secondary infertility? No. Do we plan to find out? The answer is complicated.
We tried to conceive without medication for over a year. I had a laparoscopy done to remove most of my painful, quickly-spreading disease of endometriosis. We conceived on clomid, a horrible hormone driven drug, only to miscarry.
National Infertility Awareness Week: I hated who I had become: the person people didn’t want to tell they were pregnant. An excerpt from my book.
Her words were hopeful, thoughtful even, as we sat on the giant rock staring out over the ocean. Her eyebrows were raised, her posture stiff, a question on her face, imploring if I was indeed mad at Him or not.
When my husband came home from his meeting only 30 minutes after he had left home for the meeting to "plan our transition out of this city," my heart raced. When the quiet, desperate, pained words "He fired me" came out of his mouth, I felt my eyes widen and my jaw drop.
When the birth experience I had been dreaming about for over 4 years turned into one of the loneliest experiences of my life, I felt guilty.
When we were forced to say goodbye to our first baby too soon, when his tiny body left mine to reside forever below the earth and among filth, a part of me went with him.
Cassie is a full-time PhD student, part-time blogger at <a href="http://www.sagetheblog.com/" target="_blank">Sage the Blog</a>, and a wild child at heart. She is an atheist turned Christian that strives to share her story of redemption with authenticity and vulnerability. She lives in mid-Missouri with her husband, two cats, and a dog. She is expecting her first child in June, 2017. We are beyond honored to have her share her heart on pregnancy after loss.
Last October I should have been 8 months round, nearing my due date in November. But we said goodbye to that little one, so wanted and so loved, so precious and so cherished. It felt so undeserved, losing that little baby we tried so hard for.
The test screamed positive.
Staring in disbelief, I heard a shaky voice that couldn't be mine saying, "no, no, no, no, no." My limbs trembled and I collapsed on the bathroom floor unprepared for the fear that had overtaken my entire self. Will I have to say goodbye again? Will our adoption journey be interrupted? What if we lose our adoption journey AND this baby? How will I get through another loss? How will I keep breathing?
My body miscarried and rejected our first baby.
We wanted that baby. We hoped for that baby. We prayed for that baby. We celebrated that baby. We cried tears of joy and danced celebration for that baby. That baby, Blake, left my womb too soon and we had to say goodbye before we really said hello. That baby, so precious, so loved, so wanted...I believe will one day introduce his family to Jesus.
There are up to 10 weeks left before I meet my second born son face to face, flesh on flesh. Could be sooner, but Im planning on being past my due date so that if it passes by like your average day, I am not drowning in depression (which may still happen). Today marks 32 weeks with this undeserved miracle boy. Our official date we are due to deliver is May 25, but I usually follow that with, "But we're planning for June 10th." The term "due date" used to bring me emotions of fear and grief.
While Loren and I were in the thick of desiring our family to grow and it just not happening, we were praying about pursuing adoption sooner rather than later but were also confident we would still conceive and successfully carry a baby eventually, we had people who love us share stories about adoption and pregnancy following.
The stories are always frame-worked as though the adoption had something to do with the wife suddenly being able to become pregnant. It almost always sounded like this, "I have these friends who couldn't get pregnant so they adopted, and then they got pregnant. Have you guys thought about trying to adopt?"
![A Different Take on Pregnancy After Loss [A Guest Post by Cassie]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5850be0d03596ef94b5f7921/1484601175387-MZSUQ0C7U6TH5AFA5ESO/IMG_3107.JPG)
