This week, a dear friend saw the heartbeats of her twin babies. I rejoice with her. It’s been a long struggle into parenthood. She’ll be an amazing mama and I can’t wait to see her in this new role. She shared the picture and the happy news via text. I wrote back to relay my thrill- I hit send- and then I dissolved into tears.
In June 2016, our four month old daughter Breelyn died. It was devastating. We missed Breelyn so much and wanted to have a sibling for Brooklyn on this earth but we wanted to give ourselves time to just concentrate on our grief. We chose the random number of six months to wait. We then conceived and we had our own heartbeat appointment in January 2017.
We didn’t have the same happy outcome. It was at that appointment that we first heard that there was no heartbeat, and that there would have been two babies. The outcome wasn’t certain and we were sent home for a couple of days with instructions to come in again for another test. I didn’t know what to pray, we’d prayed for Breelyn and she’d died. The second appointment came and there were no heartbeats. I had a D&C and stopped being pregnant.
In my head 75% of my children had died. It’s a lot to take- especially when early loss pregnancy isn’t something that you usually talk about. I could publicly mourn Breelyn, but not the loss of her siblings.
I don’t have the answers. I don’t know why we experience pain and loss. I hate that we do. One of my sisters and I were talking about praying for protection. She mentioned that she was ticked off that we taught our little ones that praying for protection would make it alright. It isn’t going to make it alright. Parents, siblings, and friends are still going to die. We’d prayed for protection and Breelyn still died. We’d prayed for our twins and there weren’t heartbeats. My sister’s theory is that the protection is eternal. God gives us eternal protection instead of protection here on earth. He gives us the eternal protection of a life in heaven with Him. So, I concentrate on that. I concentrate on the future where I’ll certainly have all my children running around.
And, I’ll rejoice in my friend’s children. They are a blessing and my loving them doesn’t discount the love that I have for my own. Her joy and my joy for her doesn’t erase my sadness. It can be separate- it’s ok for me to thrill for her and still be sad for me.