Mar 13, 2012
When Sadness Was the Sea…
[image via]
I’m subscribed to Dr. Joanne Cacciatore’s blog. She came to my attention after I read a book called Stillborn: The Invisible Death. The book is out of print now, but you can sometimes find it. I emailed the author of the study, Dr. John DeFrain, after I finished it back in 2007 or so, to tell him how much I needed his book.
In 2007, I didn’t know a single person who’d had a stillbirth. At least I didn’t think I did when it happened to me. I remember returning home from the hospital, and in the few days before the funeral, furiously scouring the internet for something…anything…that would help me not be so alone with a 39-week death. I don’t think I even knew I had a “stillbirth” at that point. (By the way, I still don’t love the word “stillbirth” or “stillborn,” but at least it’s a descriptor.)
So this book, this study, was done by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and was basically a survey of a few hundred families who’d suffered a stillbirth.
For me to find a few hundred people…read their words…know I wasn’t alone…know I wasn’t stupid or negligent…broke through like nothing else did at that time. I craved their stories and their experiences like a starving person craves food. I would sit with it and gorge myself until I purged, stuck in the horrible paradox of being without for so long and then not knowing when the next would come.
So I told Dr. DeFrain all that, more or less. And he told me about one of his former doctoral students, Dr. Cacciatore. I found her organization, the MISS Foundation. I found her blog.
I don’t know where I’d be without those voices and stories. I needed them to teach me how to swim. There were a lot of people who came alongside and taught me. I would have drowned otherwise. Thanks be to God, I didn’t.
Oh, you grievers out there, how I pray that you have people teaching you how to swim.
I am sure I won’t be the first to say this but that is how I felt about you. After I lost my son (at 23 weeks) a dear friend sent me a link to your blog. I immediately read everything on here about grief and Felicity. After that I read everything on here about Morrow because I could not even begin to imagine how I could manage being pregnant again. It has been 14 months since we lost our son and today we have a healthy 3.5 week old baby boy.
And yes, Thanks Be To God, I didn’t drown either. Thanks to following your blog and your story of hope and thanks to the amazing body of believers around me that reminded me of God’s kindness.
Dear Molly,
I’ve read your blog in the past but today found a link to it on another blog that I read and just happened to click on your blog today…or shall I say, I believe that God’s providence led me to your blog today. My husband and I just lost our daughter Solveig Sofia on February 29th. She was still born. I saw what you said about that term stillbirth and stillborn and I can so relate to that. I like how I saw it on a book called, Still Born, full of essays by others who have gone this road that you and I have also traveled. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly encourage you to do so.
My blog was highly neglected until I started writing again this past week or so. It has been incredibly therapeutic to write through my story and my feelings and emotions.
Thank you for sharing your story here. I will keep reading. And I’m so sorry for your loss.
Love,
Melody Johnson (a fellow Minnesotan)
You and Felicity have helped teach me how to swim. Sometimes I feel like I’m still treading water, but for the most part, keeping my head above water. Thank you!
When my baby son died in my womb at 18 weeks last year, I felt like I was just another statistic of a “miscarriage.” But I was a mother of precious little Leo. God has used your blog to really encourage me. Thank you.
After six children, God gave us a Joy just two weeks before your Felicity went to God. Joy had a vanishing twin we’re waiting to meet, and we named that baby Jubillee Set Free). I’d never heard of such a thing, and had no categories for the grief & love I felt, for both. Our next pregnancy was another set of twins, and one of them “disappeared” as well. We named our little girl Felicity Hope, and the one with Jesus, Cable Eden (our binding tie to Home). I found your blog around this time, and you have been teaching me to swim. You have been a gift from God to me. Grief is strange when no one knows why you’re crying, why you’d cry anyway, with so many others in the house, and no baby to hold & bury. We miscarried a baby Christmas ’09. We named that little one Liberty Dawn. God held me together with Isaiah 26:19. Then before we could breathe, He gave us one last to finish our dozen: Cadence Naomi. She had no heartbeat at 20 weeks, then … at the hospital, a heartbeat. I used your name (thank you!), for the same reasons. Naomi, because your father-in-law’s series on Ruth was the other “lifeguard” pulling me out of the waves. I pray the cadence of our lives will bring a new song, sometime, where I’ve had only silence and tears, and galloping years of family growth. If you do the math, it’s staggering. I want to kiss Jesus’ feet when I get Home, just to thank Him for getting me there. Thank you, Molly, for sharing your pain & hope & healing! I’m pretty sure Jesus connected me to your site, right on time.
I’ll echo the comments above…a dear friend referred me here in the weeks after my second child, Sam, was stillborn at 35 weeks. Like you, I hadn’t known of anyone who had gone through that before, and it was such a comfort to read your story and see a few steps ahead of where I was walking.
Someone asked me if I had felt extra “scatterbrained” right after we lost Sam, and I had to answer honestly, “I think so, but I can’t remember if that is true or if I just read it on Molly Piper’s blog!”
Anyway, even though we’ve never met, I do feel like you were a friend holding my hand through those first difficult weeks. Thanks for your comfort!
Molly,
Thank you for writing this. I have definitely had to learn to swim after loss too. (and it wan’t pretty. :) ) A few years into that process, the Lord was kind to allow me to be one of 4 leaders of a support group at my church for women enduring infertility, miscarriage, and infant loss. Recently, our church has made some changes which resulted in the end of our ministry at the church, and that has been very sad. As I have been asking the Lord to show me what to do with my story now, I feel like He is saying that I must continue walking with women suffering in this area. In your words, I must help them learn to swim… or at least swim along beside them so they know they are not alone. Reading your blog today was affirmation of that. Thank you.