You’re young. You can try again,” the phlebotomist says as he sticks a needle in my arm. He’s drawing blood for tests that can confirm what ultrasounds are already saying: I’m miscarrying. I recognize the young man’s try and offer comfort and receive it as such. What I don’t say is, It’s not that I just desire a baby.
Before this third pregnancy, I’d told my husband I used to be done. Any additional members added to our family of 4 wouldn’t be coming from my body. So it’s with two young children at home and in the midst of waiting for our first foster care placement that we discover out we’re pregnant again.
My body tells me early on that I’m mothering my third child, affirming in intimate ways the hidden presence of the baby being formed in my womb. The all-day queasiness of “morning” sickness. The fatigue. The slow tightening of pants around my waistline. In these ways, within the giving of myself, I’m attending to know this baby just as I did his or her older sisters.
When I begin spotting and having cramps, I get to know—to like—this baby one other way, through anguished pleading with God. I’d prayed similar prayers once before. That time, a health care provider’s “I don’t see a heartbeat …” was followed by the relief of seeing the tiny, flickering heart of my now 10-year-old. This time, there isn’t a flicker.
The heaviness settling deep in me shouldn’t be because I need a baby. I need this baby, my baby. I need my child to live.
My baby dies in my womb early in my first trimester, and I’m unprepared for the grief that rocks me. I’m also unprepared for the ways I’ll struggle to feel that this grief is permissible, whilst sobs seize my body unexpectedly throughout the day, whilst a mild depression settles in for months, even despite the news that I’m pregnant again.
Eventually, I’ll come to search out that is common, that those that miscarry often seek permission to grieve. Although 10–20 percent of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage, it might probably feel like an “invisible” loss, often occurring before family and friends even know in regards to the pregnancy. Medical trauma, involuntary childlessness, societal stigma, and guilt or self-blame can converge to make this suffering complicated.
But there’s something else that could make grieving hard—and that’s wondering whether or not our heartache is justified; about what, or more precisely, who we’re grieving.
In the weeks following my miscarriage, I feel a dissonance. Even as I mourn, a component of me casts suspicion on my sadness. My pain tells me that I actually have indeed lost a toddler. But is that basically true?
Just a few things contribute to this query. I’ve been influenced greater than I realize by the cultural milieu, which frames any affirmation of the personhood of unborn babies as ignorant at best and harmful to women at worst. Given how common miscarriage is, some argue, it’s absurd to imagine each loss is the death of an individual. Someone once casually remarked to me that she didn’t imagine heaven could be crammed with fetuses.
I’ve also spent my life in Asian American churches and ministries, where topics like sex, abortion, and miscarriage are rarely explicitly addressed. Outside of church, many of the arguments I’d seen from the pro-life movement appealed to later stages of fetal development. But my baby never looked just like the ones pictured on posters at rallies and, to my knowledge, she or he never had a heartbeat.
Is it appropriate for me, then, to grieve the death of a baby who I actually have only known in positive pregnancy tests and nausea and a rather swelling belly?
Some would argue that it doesn’t matter whether my baby was an individual with a soul. They’d reassure me that it’s ultimately my “conception of the pregnancy” and private attachment to the fetus that matters, not any objective claim about fetal value. But for me, there isn’t a escaping the query of personhood. The claim and luxury of my faith is much more wide-reaching than subjective experience and emotional relief.
The Christian hope is predicated on the person of Christ, broken not in my imagination but truly, bodily, for me. Jesus’ heart really did begin to beat again in that tomb on the third day, so our bodies really shall be raised imperishable on the last (1 Cor. 15:51–54). Christianity acknowledges that one implication of paradise lost is the physical reality of death reaching inside me, in order that I understand it in cramps and bleeding and cries of “My baby, my baby.” It also assures me that insofar as my grief corresponds to reality, my hope—that the Creator truly has my baby in his hands, that he sees and cares, that he’ll bring this child beyond the veil into eternity—is real too.
In the top, it is thru the sorrow and luxury of others that I find full permission to grieve.
My husband says, “I miss Pax”—the name we find yourself giving our baby. My father-in-law weeps for our loss. My mom tells me that Pax will at all times be her grandchild. Church members who’d hoped with us for higher news now drop off pig’s trotters in black vinegar, chicken and ginger soup, and sweet red bean porridge—Chinese postpartum food—at our door. In doing so, they’re honoring the toll pregnancy has taken on me. As they have an inclination to my body, they’re tending to my heart. Each one that acknowledges our loss is saying, You’re right. Your sadness is justified.
If each human life can invariably be traced back to its very beginnings, and if every one is made within the image of God (Gen. 1:27; James 3:9), then we who’ve lost babies within the womb are right to grieve.
But even in a church that affirms life from conception, there are subtle ways wherein the narratives we absorb prevent us from mourning with those that miscarry.
We are tempted to provide false assurances in regards to the future (“You’ll get pregnant again”) or reasons the miscarriage may need been good (“It’s higher than if the child had been born with a genetic disorder”). Sometimes blame is harmfully placed on parents (“You disobeyed God” or “You didn’t handle your body”). These responses fail to acknowledge the fact and weight of our loss, and the personhood of the babies we grieve.
If the babies we lost were truly babies, then Christians—tenderly and in ways sensitive to everyone suffering—must weep with those that weep (Rom. 12:15). The church have to be solidly pro-life here. We must acknowledge the personhood of youngsters from the womb not merely by teaching against abortion but through getting into the grief of those who are suffering pregnancy loss in all its forms.
Many in our pews have lost babies to miscarriage and stillbirth. Others are brokenhearted over babies lost to abortions, those they might not prevent or once selected and now regret. In a culture that extends sympathy for pregnancy loss but stops in need of acknowledging the fullness of what that loss implies, Christians have a novel opportunity to create space for this suffering. We of all people have solid ground from which to supply comfort, hope, and healing.
In the weeks and months following my miscarriage, I actually have conversations with other women who’ve miscarried. Some are older women who had no pro-life movements of their countries of origin. Many have never had anyone affirm to them the personhood of the babies they lost. So it’s healing for me and for them to talk openly about these children now.
“I even have a toddler in heaven,” one mother tells me. Another woman desires to know, “Do you actually imagine that your child is with God?” She is asking me about Pax, but she is considering of her own sorrow, the babies she is going to later tell me she’s lost too.
Do I think my baby is with God? Yes, I tell her without hesitation. I do.
Faith Chang is the writer of Peace over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You’re Never Good Enough. She serves at Grace Christian Church of Staten Island and on the editorial board of SOLA Network.
