Today is my youngest child’s 15th birthday. She is our only daughter out of our four children. She is a gift from Heaven. She is a gift from our fourth baby, who came before her.
When you have a big family and the three eldest kids are boys, people just assume that we kept trying until we got a daughter. But that is not really the truth. You see, we were finished with our family after three kids. That was the number of kids that we had always planned on having. We felt very lucky and blessed to have three healthy, robust, energy-filled little boys who kept us very busy and on our toes.
The fourth time that I got pregnant, I was on the pill. (let’s just say that I am what is often called a “fertile Myrtle”) We had just moved to another city and another state for my husband’s job. We had left our family and friends behind and hadn’t quite found “our legs” yet, in our new place of living and being. My husband’s new company expected all of his waking hours and then some. (this was before work/life balance became a buzzword) So, I was a young, harried mother in what felt like a foreign land, trying to keep three little energizer boys corralled, while my husband was always working and here I was, pregnant again. This wasn’t like my other pregnancies. This wasn’t a planned pregnancy. I was devastated. So was my husband. Dejectedly, we tried to turn our heads and hearts around to this baby, considering him or her to be God’s plan, which I now realize was His plan, but just not in the way that I expected the plan to go. I started my vitamins and I started going to the obstetrician, and I tried to feel happy when I saw the little flutter of the little baby’s heartbeat. But I was tired. I was lonely. I was overwhelmed. It was right after the first trimester of my fourth pregnancy, right after we had told everyone that we had another baby on the way, that I started bleeding profusely. We lost our fourth baby when I was about 14 weeks pregnant. The doctor scheduled the D&C at a little country hospital because all of the large hospitals were full that day. That, in itself, turned out to be part of God’s plan too, because the nurse attending to me felt like she was an angel sent from God. She had all the right words, she took the time to hold me and she let me cry and cry. That nurse understood how painful a miscarriage really is for a woman. She understood the loss, and she was patient with my denial, when I kept saying that I think that we should do just one more ultrasound, just to be sure. I sent her flowers after I recovered at home. I don’t remember her name, but I will always remember her heart and her kindness. And her wings.
I had a really hard time getting over my miscarriage. I came from an “old school” background where I was taught that miscarriages were probably really disguised blessings, because there was likely something “wrong” with the baby. Yet, I had so many mixed feelings. Having started the pregnancy so apathetically, I felt so guilty and so ashamed. I felt like I was being punished. I tried to focus on the blessing of our three young sons. I felt a compassion for women who had multiple losses and long struggles of trying to get pregnant, like I never had before. I was so, so sad – sadder than I had ever been in my life. I felt a sadness that was so deep that I sometimes thought I would just sink into it and then, the only thing that kept me going, was the sense of duty I felt to my family. My husband had scheduled a vasectomy, like we had agreed, when I was still pregnant. At that time, we felt like we couldn’t afford or deal with any more “surprises.” Still, we found reasons to cancel that appointment, and then reasons again to cancel the rescheduled appointment.
One day, after weeks and weeks of thoughtful, prayerful contemplation, I admitted to my husband that I didn’t think I would fully recover from this miscarriage, unless we had another baby. My heart was telling me that our fourth baby’s brief appearance in our lives, was on purpose. That baby was a messenger, telling us that our family was not complete. That baby’s purpose was to let us know, that our family needed one more baby. My husband felt my strong, earnest calling and he understood and he agreed. We got pregnant the first time that we tried again. And we were thrilled and excited and grateful from the get-go, with this new pregnancy. We were so excited for another baby, boy or girl, it didn’t matter!
On March 23, 2004, our beautiful daughter entered our lives and our family was made complete. She has been such a blessing of joy, and beauty and wonder and excited energy from the minute she was born. She is exactly what our family needed, a mighty, strong, yet feminine touch. Our daughter is the beautiful, excited exclamation point at the end of the statement, that describes our family. Her middle name is “Faith.”
Whenever all six members of my family are on a trip, or hiking a trail, or just hanging out in the yard, I often see a bluish-black butterfly. My heart smiles a little and I usually whisper, “Hi, baby.” I think that our fourth baby’s spirit likes to flutter by sometimes and hang out with the family. He or she is a very special part of our creation and I’m so happy to know that he or she is still a part of us, helping to guide us through life. He or she is an excellent guide.
