Soon after my husband and I delivered our first child, we decided that we loved being parents so much that we would like to have another baby to grow up close to our first. We became pregnant right away and were so excited! We couldn’t wait to do it all over again; however, our first ultrasound immediately changed our course. A miscarriage was the farthest thing from our minds. During the ultrasound, we saw a sac… but no baby. We scheduled another ultrasound a week later, and again… we saw an even bigger sac… but still, no baby. The Doctors began to explain to us that there was a problem, and described this pregnancy as a Blighted Ovum. They immediately wanted to do a D&C, and my husband and I agreed; however, something inside of me said, “No!” I couldn’t explain it. We kindly declined and decided to let my body take care of the process. Five weeks later, my body finally took care of it naturally, but those five weeks were very long and extremely emotional.
You see, my body hadn’t yet figured out what we already knew… that there was no baby, so it continued to produce hormones and develop the sac. Because of this, my belly continued to grow and so did my emotions. It was especially hard when someone, who didn’t know, would come up and pat my belly. I would just gently smile, politely go on my way, and SEVERELY WEEP when I was alone. We are happy to announce that since then, we have gone on to have another child, and we are now the parents of two wonderful boys, who are the best of friends!
After A LOT of God-moments and crazy events, we decided to name our little one Peek-a-Boo. I won’t go into the crazy awesome God details of how that name came about, but we felt like God gave us the name and that it was very fitting. You see, even though we couldn’t see the baby with our own eyes, we knew that God could and that he was carefully “hiding” in the gentle arms of Jesus. If we believe that life begins at conception, and there were definite signs of conception, then there was life… if not here, then in heaven.
This past April, I had a dream, and God allowed me to see Peek-a-Boo for the very first time! I will not go into the details of the dream nor what he looked like, but we now know that HE (yes, it was a boy) is room-mates with my husband’s dear, sweet mom, who passed away this past December.
One month after my dream, we found out that we were pregnant again! The excitement was in the air…, especially with our boys! They have hoped and prayed for a little baby for a long time now, and they were finally getting their wish! We went for our first ultrasound, and there it was… a little pea with a heartbeat! We were so excited (and relieved) to see this little life! Then… about a week-and-a-half later, I started hemorrhaging and was immediately rushed to the hospital, where I continued to lose the baby. It seemed so surreal! We couldn’t believe this was really happening! All we could think of was that little heartbeat that we saw just a week before, that was beating so strongly and perfectly.
I couldn’t help but to go over and over again the events that took place during the past week. Was it something that I did? Did I lift something that was too heavy? Did I twist or stretch in a way that tore something? Did I not want it bad enough? I just couldn’t figure it out! Although we will never know why the one thing that I did know as I laid there in the emergency room was that I had so much PEACE and JOY that I began to feel guilty about it. (Philippians 4: 4-7) I was almost more upset about the peace and joy that I felt inside than I was about losing this little baby. Oh! Don’t get me wrong, We are devastated about losing the baby! We have definitely had our crying fits, but we are not in complete agony like before… this time is different… or maybe this time WE are different…
Death has no place in this world! We were not created to die! We were created to live forever! That is one thing that triggers so much pain and sorrow when loved-ones die. Something in our spirit knows that that’s NOT how it’s supposed to be.
We know that our little one is now in the arms of Jesus and possibly living with his Grammy and brother in heaven. I always pictured myself as being a mom of three. I guess, technically, we are now parents of four just not in this world. One day, we will all be reunited with our loved ones, and what a JOY-ous day that will be!
Because of the unexplainable joy that we both have felt during this process, We have both decided to call our little baby “Joy,” and we know that my mom-in-law is feeling great JOY by holding her little grand.
Just because we have joy, doesn’t mean that we can’t cry. Psalm 30:5 lets us know that “Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes in the morning.” There are also times that I think that we could read that as “joy comes in the ‘mourning?’ Psalms 126:5 says that “Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.” We are spiritual beings, but we still have a physical body with emotions. We can have joy and still cry. Our friend’s Facebook picture pretty much sums it up… It says, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” I couldn’t have put it better myself…
We love you, Peek-a-Boo and Joy, and we look forward to spending all of eternity with you!
