Last Sunday we discovered that we were 6 weeks pregnant. A few days of excitement, hopes and dreams for the future followed. Lying in bed at night exchanging ideas for names, talking about how we would make our wee flat work with a third little person in our family, and laughing lots because we were just so, so happy. Then there were a few days where I was in a bit of panic about practicalities like what would happen with my work, how we would afford a period of time with me not working, whether I'd be able to pull together enough evening work at just the right time so that we would be earning enough and always have one of us free to look after the baby. And then I managed to get my eyes back onto God, trusting Him as provider and trusting that He would make our path straight. Thanking Him for the incredible blessing that He was knitting together inside of me.
Then the weekend rolled around.
Around tea time on Sunday evening we discovered I was bleeding. Owen phoned NHS 24 and we were told to go to Out of Hours. The doctor did a test and it came back with a very faint positive, so he referred us to Early Pregnancy Assessment to get a scan the following day. I continued to bleed and by the time we had the scan there were no signs of pregnancy. The midwife took a blood test, just to confirm what she suspected, and called in the afternoon with the news that we had had a full miscarriage and our baby was gone.
It's amazing how many different opinions there are when it comes to the subject of miscarriage. And for some, there is an assumption that it will remain largely unspoken and that no one needs to know about it. But, for me, I find that utterly impossible. My life has been deeply changed and I am different because of it, so how can I just hide what has happened? And why should I? Even putting that aside, I just want to hide away in a cocoon of blankets and shut the world out - but I want my friends and my family to know why I don't want to talk. Because I want them to still be there when I'm ready.
I can't wrap my head around it all. I feel a deep, deep connection to a child that I never got to meet. A child that I only knew was growing inside me for a week. But that same child has profoundly changed me. I know that I can never look at the world in quite the same way. I call into question all of my priorities and all of the ways that I spend my life. I question the way I treat my body - which I have felt changing to accommodate another life and which is now reverting back to how it was before - and, despite having eaten little more than biscuits and chocolate over the last few days, I feel determined to take better care of it. It's impossible to just go back to life as it was before we knew about our wee baby. It's impossible to forget little Grace and the season we had with her, however short.
It's hard to know how to respond to what has happened. And it's difficult to see how life is going to be in the weeks and months ahead as we come to terms with losing Grace. But we're holding on tight to God, who is unchanging. We are trusting in His faithfulness. And we are looking to Him for comfort in the midst of our pain.
"All of my life, in every season, You are still God, I have a reason to sing. I have a reason to worship"
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