All Tears Make Rainbows

Please if you are very sensitive to miscarriage stuff just skip this post and in a day or two I will put up cute pics of John and get back to discussing something else. For today my heart is full of this and it must come out somewhere.

When tears fall on my glasses and the sun shines just right I can see the rainbows. There is no bright side to losing a child, no silver lining, no plus, none of that stuff that is so easy to think when other bad things happen in this life. That doesn't mean that there is no hope, there is of course the hope of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, there is the comfort that the child is with Christ and it's sibling, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandpa and Omi right now. There is comfort in knowing that the child is not scared, or lonely, cold or crying, all things that this mommy's heart is broken over because I can't provide. There is the comfort given by faithful family and friends who cry with me and who remind me of God's promises. There is the comfort of a loving husband who finds me crying here and there and holds me, who does sweet things for me, and who entertains a silly little boy too. The silly little boy is much comfort his own self, even when he is being a nut and driving his chair standing up, falling out, getting pinned between chair and wall, crying for ice for his head, checking out that there is actually ice in the rag and then telling dad that he needs down and to go play, I could have held him for much longer but I guess he's getting older now and doesn't need a mommy's comfort for long.

There is this time a comfort that I didn't even know that I was missing when I lost Katherine. At my doctor's office today there was no pressure for dnc, actually my doctor told me that it was in my best interest to be able to pass this baby on my own, that it would be awful, but that I could do it. There is no comfort in knowing that my child in my womb is dead, my body is already hurting in its preparation for passing that tiny little body and all that is with it. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to labor and deliver a living child, I know what this feels like and it hurts, both physically and emotionally. But this time there is no threat that if I can't do it in a set time that I will have to have my baby removed, there is no continuing need for return appointments to make sure that my hormone levels are dropping, I am being left to do this at peace, at home, in the time it takes. Each day that I knew that Katherine was dead inside me I lived with the knowledge that I was going to be forced to either be sedated or lie still and have her forcefully removed from me, I didn't know at that time that it was rarely ever necessary to do that, and never had to be a first option. I had nightmares about it when I slept and awake kept praying that I would not have to go through what seemed to be a terror to me. I have visited with a few women who had dnc's after a miscarriage and in their stories I hear as much trauma from the grief over their missing child as I hear in the horror of it's removal. This time I know that while my little Patrick's soul is in heaven with Christ, his body is safely within me waiting for me to be able to let go of him and until that day I can hold him in the only way that is given me. More rainbows, but at least this time the tears that cause them do not come from fear, just the sorrow of missing the baby that I would have held in my arms.

There is comfort in knowing that my left ovary is fine. We have been worried about it for a long time, with Katherine and again with Patrick I had pain on the left side so badly that we were afraid that I might have something very wrong there. After a very painful exam the doctor was able to explain to me that I'm really just hardwired weird. The nerves in the pelvis are not such that we can pinpoint where pain is exactly and some people like me are wired so that one place always hurts in another, called referral pain. When my uterus hurts it feels like my left ovary is being ripped out of my side. Not pleasant, but not dangerous to me, and it was not a cause of losing Patrick or Katherine. There is also comfort in knowing that I don't have fibroids or endometriosis, both of which we have worried about in dealing with this left side pain.

There is some comfort in knowing that during the process of this short pregnancy the doctor that I am going to found and is treating a genetic defect that likely killed my father at 44, and could have done the same to me, I turn 44 this year. My body stinks on ice at absorbing folic acid and using it properly, which causes micro-clotting, which causes miscarriages and arteriosclerosis, the later took my dad. That is knowledge that we had before our baby died, so tis good information, helpful and all but certainly no silver lining. With the knowledge that at my age half the eggs I put out are chromosomally screwed up and the other half if fertilized will have to fight my chronic systemic inflammation for life is scary on one hand but on the other according to my doctor not impossible to overcome. His advice was to stay on the supplementation that he placed me on, remain on a low glycemic diet, follow the things that help with inflammation and to not be discouraged or give up hope, to let the miscarriage proceed on it's own, make sure a pregnancy test comes up negative, and then try again. We weren't trying in the first place, truthfully we didn't think that we could get pregnant when Katherine came along and after a year of losing her we were shocked and delighted that Patrick came along. I don't exactly know what trying means, but I do know what living our life and letting God do what God will do is. I like this doctor, it is a comfort that we found him, even today, even through my tears I hope we have need to visit with him again.

In the end we do not know if we lost our baby because of chromosonal issues or if he just couldn't fight through the inflammation in my body. There is some comfort in knowing that I now know what to do to help the inflammation resolve but in the end the only real comfort that there is to keep from going insane this side of heaven is the blessing of Christ, the promise that I will not have to endure more than I can handle, even if it feels like I'm dangling over the edge from time to time I am at least not going to fall. Christ is my strength, He is my life and He is my hopes foundation.