We'll Laugh About This SomedaySample

Experiencing multiple miscarriages over the course of four years was like watching water swish back and forth in a tube. On one end, I recognized that I was experiencing a very unfortunate but common process in creating other humans. And then, swoosh—despair.

The fourth pregnancy, however, showed some promise. I had made it past week eight, a milestone I had never reached before. But one morning, I woke up with a ferocious migraine. Each of my miscarriages had started with one, and a few days later after the headache had gone, so had my baby. Feeling the migraine grow in intensity coincided with the terror of yet another loss, but it all somehow intertwined with a familiar sense of redundancy and boredom. I had been here before. I was scared. I was exhausted. What else was new? . . .

I slowly followed Wendy, the nurse practitioner,  into a room with an ultrasound machine. You could tell she hadn’t run one in a while and started poking at it. Eventually it behaved in a recognizable way, and after gooping up my belly, she moved the wand around. I saw her immediately. My precious little Lucy, with a big, rounded head, a protruding torso like a sea horse, and the skinniest twiggy little legs, pumping furiously like she was fleeing the cops on paddleboat.

“Well now, that doesn’t look like a miscarriage to me,” Wendy said gently.

I laughed my way into sobs and put my hands to my bulging, throbbing eyes so they wouldn’t pop out. I had suffered and grieved, and now there she was, growing just as she was supposed to.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for giving me hope and comfort when I am in despair. Thank you for walking through my struggles with me and for the new mercies you grant me each day. Amen.