Recurrent Miscarriage
Great video on how Christians should approach this experience.
One thing that has struck me since losing Zachary (though obviously not through a miscarriage) is the number of people I meet who have lost children. It is the unspoken grief that many carry around but few articulate.
Two weeks ago I attended the funeral of my nephew Matthew who died 4 months into the pregnancy, after my sister went into premature labour. Watching my brother in law filling in the grave where my nephews tiny coffin lay, was truly heart braking.
Fortunately my sister and her husband do have a very lively, boy called Daniel, and he is helping them work through their grief. If Matthew had been their first child, I think the sense of loss and devastation would have been even harder to bear.
Matthew was a perfectly formed, healthy little boy, the only reason he died was because my sisters waters broke – there is no explanation as to why this happened. My sister and her husband were able to hold their son after his birth (even though he was still born), and had a naming & blessing ceremony.
Because he was only 22 and a half weeks old, neither his birth or death were registered (this only occurs after 24 weeks), but at least he has been properly buried, and has a marked grave. What I find so shocking is the thought that in the UK babies can be legally aborted up to 24 weeks – which whilst rare, I find an utterly appalling thought.
What is helping my sister and husband come to terms with their loss is having their son Daniel, and their strong faith. I know that they believe, along with the rest of the family, that one day they will get to meet Matthew in heaven, and then the loss and pain will be fully healed.
I've written an article about Matthew for the Living Faith Column in the Walsall Advertiser, which comes out next week – a copy of the article can be found on my blog, revbickers.blogspot.com
Yes, it is something that people have sympathy for a time but then (like all bereavements) people don’t really want to hear anymore about it.
What I think deserves more thought, is how until comparatively recently losing a child was common place. At my nephew’s funeral a few years ago (suicide) I was chatting to my oldest cousin (28 years older than me) about how my sister will cope with the death of her only son. We then got to talk about my grandmother who buried FOUR of her children. A toddle around any Victoria graveyard reveals that it was seldom a family wasn’t touched by the death of a child – and often several children (Patrick Bronte (father of the Bronte sisters) saw his wife and all his children die before him). Both my parents lost siblings in childhood.
I think we have lost touch with death and its necessary presence in our lives – I think miscarriage falls under the same vanishing spell; that we should forget about it – that it shouldn’t really be talked about. It is one of those uncomfortable truths that life is finite – and belief in God little if any protection from the cruel vagaries of the world. And no one wants to hear that… Not least in the pews where God is often promoted as the means to healthy and successful ends…
P.