“I’m sorry, I don’t know any other way of saying it. There is no heartbeat”.
For a long time I wasn’t sure there would ever be a day where those words wouldn’t entirely paralyze me. My husband and I had just found out at our eighteen week ultrasound, that our son had gone home to be with Jesus. We had walked into that office, excited to find out the gender of our baby, and left with our world completely shattered. The details of that day are intertwined into every part of my being. It is a moment in my life that has marked me forever.
Walking through the grief and trauma of losing a baby was something my husband and I had never experienced before, and we didn’t have the first clue how to navigate it. Stillbirth, miscarriage, and every type of pregnancy loss are not talked about enough throughout most of society. Women have been told to hide their losses and pretend like they never happened, and many have been told that their babies were not even real people. Because of this, mothers who are walking through this trauma have no idea what to expect, very little support, and are incredibly confused about what is true regarding their loss.
This is what led to my passion to provide a book that could help guide mothers through the many facets of this particular trauma. Part of that passion was to unpack all that Scripture tells us about pregnancy loss. To answer the hard questions of, “Does God value an unborn baby’s life?”, “Will I see my baby in heaven?”, “When does life begin?”, “Why does God allow suffering in our lives?”, and many more.
The other chapters of the book address things like how and why men and women grieve pregnancy loss differently, what this particular type of grief can look like, how society has shaped the way women grieve this type of loss, what is true/not true about the hurtful things others can say about our babies, how our suffering is different as believers, and ways to remember and cherish your baby. There is also a bonus chapter for dads, written with the help of my husband.
I hope and pray that this book will be the resource for other mothers, that I desperately needed after the loss of my baby. I pray that others will read this book, knowing that it comes from a mother who has walked through immeasurable pain like they have. And that they will be able to rest in the truth of Scripture and discover that though we will have moments of grief for the rest of our lives, it is possible to heal and experience joy again.