Pregnancy After Miscarriage & Jesus

A patient God with His grieving daughter

To start, I'd like to say there is nothing unique about what you are about to read. These words are the echos of millions of other mothers who have walked the same dark tunnel. You could stop reading this very moment, head to your search engine, and find story after story reflecting the broken heart of a mother who will never hold her child and are again faced with the threat of experiencing some of the deepest grief she will ever endure.

And yet, we cannot ignore the way the Lord knitted us together. So I must write.

When I realized I was pregnant again, it was only weeks after the miscarriage. Our hospital bill hadn't even arrived from our emergency room visit. I can't recall the exact amount of time. The summer was blur of grief and wrestling with the Lord, tears and deep inhales to muster the energy to face another day with an empty but aching womb. The doctors at the hospital and the OBGYN office told me it could take up to three months for my body to fully recover from the miscarriage. In that time, it was expected that I might not have a menstrual cycle, my uterus would continue to bleed from the loss, I would have abdominal and pelvic pain, and I would have pregnancy symptoms due to hormones still in my body, such as fatigue, headaches, queasiness, etc. I also learned that since I had one loss, I was now statistically more likely to have another. One day, I started to have the inkling I was pregnant again. And while I longed for life to be in my womb for now a second time, was grateful that I could get pregnant at all, I also didn't want to believe it.

My period had not returned, but pregnancy symptoms persisted. And a familiar intuition, once again, began knocking. My husband's did too. I remember I came out of the restroom one day. Fear consuming my body in the most visceral way.

"Ryan," I said, walking up to him.

He looked up at me before I could reach him, the man who wanted to be a dad more than anyone I knew, who once jumped for joy at the news of a life growing inside of me, and his eyes were empty, his face heavy, and he said flatly, "You're pregnant again."

"How did you know what I was going to say?" I asked him.

"I just know."

I went to the OBGYN, a follow up appointment for the miscarriage to check to see how my body was recovering. I was still in pain. But the pain in my reproductive organs paled in comparison to the pain my heart. I told the doctor, the ultrasound tech, and the nurse, that I thought I was pregnant again. Each one denied my gut instinct.

"No, your urine test came back negative."

"No, the ultrasound isn't showing anything."

"No, I don't see that here on your chart."

But I knew from my first pregnancy that the embryo this early was too small to be seen on an ultrasound and the pregnancy hormone HCG would be too low to detect in a urine test, especially taken in the late afternoon after I had been drinking water all day, diluting the results.

A week later I took two tests first thing in the morning, the cheapest kind picked up on a grocery run, and left them on the bathroom counter. Ryan was up, quiet, getting ready for the day, much unlike the last time I took the tests in which he paced in excitement around our room, waiting for the results. I knew they would be positive and I felt nothing. No joy, no excitement, but an icy numbness. When Ryan and I went to see how many lines would appear on those little white films, we stared in silence.

Two lines, each test. Two positives. Two people, too grief-stricken to respond. We didn't discuss it for weeks. Because a positive pregnancy test no longer meant we will have a baby. To us, in that moment, it was only a symbol that we could be headed towards more loss, more grief.

I was naive about the trauma that comes from miscarriage. I had seen people post about their rainbow babies for years on social media. And even then, I did not understand the weight behind what that meant. And now I do. A rainbow doesn't just represent another pregnancy or another baby, something good after something bad. For many couples it is a symbol of not only the devastation they have endured, but the screaming anxiety they face in the midst of new life, and the courage it takes to carry life again for nine long months, to hope again for the better part of a year, or try to, knowing that there is no guarantee that pregnancy results in meeting your baby face to face and taking them home. The rainbow symbolizes despair, medical bills you wish you didn't have to pay, painful memories of being in the hospital, of letting your body heal for the weeks and months to come, of being home knowing your baby will never be there with you, and fear, months worth of fear. It is only now I understand why the doctor's office says you're "expecting" a baby, and never that you're "having" one.

So while some couples were rejoicing at the news of their babies, planning their nursery decorations, buying baby clothes and supplies, sharing the news with loved ones, we were living robbed of such joyful ignorance. We did not have the privilege of believing that pregnancy ends with life. We told only a few close loved ones. I hid my growing bump from our church, my parents, my clients at work, and with all the faith we had left, we sought the Lord.

I wish I could say that all our loved ones clapped and cheered at the news of our second pregnancy. I wish I could say we did too. But whenever we told someone who knew of our first pregnancy, their chest rose as they breathed in, their eyes narrowed in compassion and concern, and they looked as cautious to celebrate our news as we felt to share it. In a way, it validated my fears. If they were scared to be happy about this, and it's not even their child or their body, surely it was understandable that I was scared too. As a woman said in one of the many podcasts I listened to for navigating pregnancy after loss, "You don't have to be happy about this pregnancy. You just have to survive it."

The spiritual warfare around me was thick, like a wet blanket I couldn't take off my skin. I continued to have nightmares of miscarrying for months, waking in the middle of the night breathing fast and hard, sometimes startling enough to wake Ryan too. Flashbacks interrupted my everyday life. I carried anger and sadness in my body like a flu. Anxiety consumed me. Every ache and pain, every odd symptom, every wrong pull or twist or pressure on my body made me fear the worst. Am I bleeding? Was the shower too hot? Did I sleep wrong? Should I not have lifted that? Should I not have eaten that? Should I not have bent that way? Should I not cross my legs? Should I not have sang or danced, gotten up too fast, leaned on the counter, swam underwater, driven over that speedbump, let the dog jump on me, the cat lay on me? And the spiral continued. As a mental health counselor, I knew I was struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. I knew trauma physically changes the networking of our brain, that we don't get to choose how our brain initially processes trauma and manifests itself into our day-to-day lives, that after trauma, our brain is not physically capable of perceiving life the same way again, and as Christians we don't see God the same way again either.

I was confused and angry about why God would allow this loss and how He expected me to be filled with faith so soon. How could I embrace joy about one life when I was still grieving another? And while people told us it was all a part of God's plan, God's timing, that He would use this for something greater, my heart sank, and I struggled to trust that the Lord would protect this pregnancy if He did not protect the first.

"What is the difference between a baby born in February and a baby born in March!" I cried out to my therapist one session. I buried my wet face in my hands, weeping audibly and uncontrollably, shaking, and heaving. I was 27 years old, and in the last seven years of therapy, I had never sobbed in such a way in front of her before. After years of hearing people tell me that God was going to use my trials to help someone else, I felt exhausted. I told her I was done being a pawn in God's game of life. In that moment in time, I did not want to think about being used for God's greater story. I just wanted my baby. The child I lost. How human of me, and how holy. Even in my grief, His image, His reflection, was eminent. Who else but God longs to be reunited with His children. And how much greater are His desires than ours.

She reminded me that Christians, though good-intentioned, get it wrong when we jump to how God will use our trials for good and skip the character of His heart. That we do not serve a utilitarian God.

He does not move us around like chess pieces just to use us to help someone else more worthy of blessings than us. He grieves for us. He is angry alongside us. We are His children. It is this broken world that He longs to rescue us from, and longs for us to be joined with Him in Paradise. It was Jesus who wept at Lazarus' death (John 11: 35). And while we often think of Jesus' tender heart in this verse, scholars remind us that the book of John was originally written in Greek. And the Greek translation of this verse was that Jesus' weeping was indignant, consisting of anger at the perceived unfairness of Lazarus losing his life. When I wept in my therapist's office that day at the perceived unfairness of losing my baby, I see now Jesus was weeping with me.

However, while I wrestled with God, Ryan lit up in the Lord. I almost didn't recognize him. His anger and sadness moved to hope and happiness. He came to me, smiling one day, saying that he was going to start fasting. And when he did I saw the Spirit radiate from his words and his presence. On my most hormonal, moody of days, whenever I was the least deserving of love, Ryan was the most peaceful, the most patient and gentle, the most loving, speaking words of wisdom, and when he didn't know what to say, asking the Lord to give him both wisdom and the words. This entire pregnancy, he has not ceased to be firm in prayer over me, laying hands, and taking care of my heart and body in the midst of pregnancy symptoms.

As a newlywed, I realized I was experiencing true marital headship and spiritual leadership. I didn't need Ryan to teach me how to be on fire for the Lord again. Change rarely happens apart from love. I needed to feel the tangible love and comfort of Jesus. Ryan was loving me as Christ loves the Church, nourishing me, cherishing me without fail, as he is called to as a husband, so that I might be holy, presented in splendor (Ephesians 5:25-30).

One night I cried on the phone to my friend. While wracked with grief over losing the first pregnancy and anxiety enduring this one, I, like many mothers pregnant after loss, began to question if we were at fault. Maybe we were reckless and irresponsible for getting pregnant both times. Maybe we should've waited. Maybe it was my fault I lost my baby. The enemy can so easily cloud our minds. As if we ever have that much power and control next to the God who is in charge of creating all life itself and an enemy in charge of the dark forces so capable of destroying it.

"At the very least," I said through tears, "What more could a wife ask for than for her husband to fall more in love with the Lord?"

Reader, I wish I could tell you that I embraced faith in Jesus protecting my pregnancy, trusting Him wholeheartedly with the life of this baby. I wish I could tell you my worship unto the Lord was a joyful one these last six months. But the truth is that while I never stopped reading my Bible and praying, I imagined myself staring at Jesus from 15 feet away, in anger at times, in sadness always, in tears, asking Him how I was supposed to have faith in answered prayers for this baby when He did not answer the prayers for my first. I felt abandoned and ignored by God. I felt isolated and alone on my journey, not knowing other women who had been pregnant after loss. And like most hard things in life, the majority of people don't want to discuss it with you, or they don't know how, or they assume it wasn't a big deal, that you're okay. Who can fault them? The greatest empathy and awareness comes from having lived a similar experience.

But surely, I thought to myself, I had been through much worse things in life, all of which had led me to cling to Jesus, not feel distant. What makes this experience so different? I questioned. While processing with Ryan one day, the words finally came.

"You know how they say there's nothing like a mother's love?" I said to him one night.

He nodded, listening attentively as the tears filled my eyes.

"I don't think there's anything like a mother's heartbreak."

I imagined kneeling at Jesus' feet, unable to meet His gaze, telling Him I wanted to trust Him with the life of my baby, and often found myself uttering the words of the leper over and over again, "Lord, if you are willing" (Matthew 8:2). My anger, my questions, therefore my honesty and comfort with the Lord, were evidence of my intimacy with Him. In acknowledging Jesus' power over my circumstances, my lament, my surrender, I began to see, was still worship.

In Jesus is the Question: The 307 Questions Jesus Asked and the 3 He Answered by Martin B. Copenhaver, he writes, "No one feels so alone as the one who feels deserted by God...the greater one's faith, the greater the potential disillusionment when that faith is directed toward a God who seems to have left without a trace. It is the one who rejoices most in God's presence who is the most bereft when God is gone. By this measure, could anyone have felt so deserted, so alone, all, all, alone, as Jesus on the cross?"

Jesus, who is God Himself, should have been the last person to feel abandoned by God. And yet it was because He was the closest to the Father, that He felt so abandoned. As Copenhaver writes, God became "human enough to experience human doubts, bone-deep despair, and even the perceived absence of God...even my feelings of being abandoned by God are not foreign to God. Even in my abandonment, I am still known by God." In reading these pages at a coffee shop one day, the Spirit revealed to me that Jesus was not far from me at all.

I write this today on the cusp of entering the third trimester of pregnancy, full of prayer, under a waterfall of His grace, knowing my life is not mine but that Christ is my life (Colossians 3:4), knowing nothing in this earthly life is guaranteed, but that even if I lost everything, we would still have the cross.

Through these months, I found it hard to listen to any Christian music besides Kings Kaleidoscope. I noticed that most of their songs fell into either one of two categories. Either psalms crying out to the Lord in anguish or songs praising Jesus for His sacrifice on the cross. Fitting since those were the only two things I seemed to be able to talk to the Lord about, too. I later learned that Chad Gardner, the lead singer, and his wife experienced a stillbirth back in 2014. I don't know if there is a correlation, but I do know that once we realize how quickly the things that matter to us can be stripped away here on earth, the only thing left standing is the cross. His sacrifice for my soul I'll never deserve. The ransom He paid on my behalf. The blood poured out that should've been mine. The torture he endured so I could walk free. For my shortcomings, my wretchedness, my sin, my shame, my unrighteousness. For everything that makes me a villain in someone else's story, in my story, in His. That while this world can bring much excitement and delight, the only excitement that cannot be taken from us is waiting to walk the golden streets of Heaven reunited with the One who loves us beyond our human understanding.

I cannot explain why God allows us to go through tragedy in this world. But I can explain that He loves us enough to save us from ever going through it again in the next.

I could write an entire book on this experience, but thankfully other people already have. The book Courageously Expecting by Jenny Albers for Christian women navigating pregnancy after loss has been one that I have sat hunched over, every page penned and underlined. And after finally talking to other women who have gone through this journey, it is clear that although our experiences were all different, they were also very much the same.

I could tell you about how hard it is for us to connect to our baby in the womb, how we move through pregnancy the way one would treat any other physical ailment.

I could tell you about the hurt that comes from good-intentioned people who don't know what to say or say the wrong thing. And yet I know that comes from never having experienced this particular trauma, and for that I am thankful that they don't know this pain.

I could write about how common it is for these nine months to feel as if they are slowly crawling by.

I could tell you about the joylessness.

How we envy the joyful women so confident their own pregnancies will result in babies.

How we are daily on the look out for blood, for lack of movement, for too much movement, for anything that could signal our baby is in distress.

How much anticipated and yet dreaded each OBGYN appointment feels, bracing ourselves for the staff to not find a heartbeat or to find something wrong that could endanger our baby's arrival, or their life.

How much we long to reach every milestone in pregnancy and how it immediately follows with more anxiety wondering if our baby will survive to the next one.

How we feel we can never truly rest until that baby is safely in our arms.

How we might never experience the joy of learning we are pregnant ever again and the bliss in waiting for that baby to arrive. Honestly, I haven't spoken with a woman yet who was able to after loss, even if her first pregnancy was normal.

The list goes on.

Ryan and I have reached a stage of choosing to believe this baby will enter the world. We talk and sing to my belly, we rejoice at her little punches and kicks while we pray we will see them outside my womb. As life demands, we move forward, because what choice do any of us have? And I pray not only for her, but that God continually helps me see the world through His eyes. And if Ryan and I get the opportunity, that Jesus molds us into parents who are like Him, that our family would be a ministry fit for His kingdom and the gospel, that our children would have the gift of faith, and if not, that they find Him. That our home would be holy ground, filled with laughter and direction, silliness and peace, music and dancing, provision, encouragement, compassion, and forgiveness. That first and foremost, despite everything, they would experience Jesus, which changes everything.

Katie Donohue Tona

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