Almost 8 years ago to the day I found out I was pregnant with our 4th baby. My husband was in his Master’s program and we lived in the city of Philadelphia with 3 small children. We knew we wanted more children but we agreed it would be best to wait until after he finished grad school to get pregnant again.

Jake was extremely busy with his classes. We would rarely see him late at night after he returned home from long days of clinical and studies. More weeks than not the kids would not get to see him until the weekend when he would be home on Sundays with us.

He was stressed, I was stressed, life was tough.

Jake had been studying for a big upcoming final for a long time. It was a test that was detrimental to his survival in the program. He was worried sick that if he did not pass that test he would not be able to finish and go on with the career he had desired. Feeling his concern, I was worried too and was trying so hard to support him any way I could by easing any burdens possible at home. I wanted to make life seem effortless when he came home so he could focus on passing that test.

2 Tests

Well, he finally took the test and would not find out his score for about a whole week or two after he took it. We were on pins and needles hoping and praying that he passed.

Meanwhile, I had been feeling a little off myself, kind of the way I usually feel before I am about to start my period. My period never came and a day late turned into 2, 3, & 4 days. I decided to head to the store to ease my mind of a possible pregnancy by buying a home pregnancy test.

Without telling anyone I took it home and to my extreme shock, I was pregnant! I was completely thrown off guard. This was not in our plans for the time being and especially was not the news of relief we were looking for in this specific moment in our lives.

I asked myself, “How can I tell Jake I am pregnant when He is already so stressed and worried about the future.” To answer my question I decided I would not tell him I was pregnant until after he found out the results to the test he had taken.

This was hard news to keep to myself. I wanted to tell him so bad. But I didn’t want him to feel more overwhelmed than he already did, so I continued to wait.

A few days later I was out grocery shopping with the kids. It was after dinner and Jake was at school catching up on other assignments and homework he needed to finish. My cell phone rang, I answered. It was from Jake. “Hi hon”, I said. “Hi babe, I have some good news to tell you” he replied. “I passed my test!”. “you did?, Yay great work!” I said. Feeling like I finally had the approval to tell him my news I went ahead, “Well since you told me your good news I will tell you my good news too…

I AM PREGNANT!”.

SILENCE….

“Oh really? uh…wow…ok. well, I will talk to you when I get home later, love you bye.” he quietly said.

And then I heard a click.

I thought to myself, “well that could have gone worse”.

When he got home that night we talked about all the news. We were admittedly a little scared to be pregnant again at this point in his schooling but both agreed it must have been what the Lord wanted for our family and it would all work out. After the initial shock set in we were so happy about the surprise pregnancy.

Well, the days and weeks went by, and boy was I ever sick. I had been sick with my previous pregnancies but never this bad. I could not keep anything down it seemed. I would vomit so violently I would oftentimes be throwing up blood at the same time. It was rough. I was on anti-nausea medication but it did not seem to help at all. On top of this, I was severely depressed. I had been since I was pregnant with my last baby. I had previously reached out and gotten help from my doctor, (since my third child was born) I was on an antidepressant. It seemed to be helping me before I found out I was pregnant again, but with being physically sick on top of mentally ill it was more than I felt I could handle. Many days I remember just laying helpless on the couch or on the bed and watching my kids destroy the apartment around me while I just cried from feeling so weak mentally and physically.

I cried and cried.

My husband helped as much as he possibly could but he needed to focus on finishing his program. One night after filling the toilet with blood-filled throwup, I finally asked him to give me a priesthood blessing. I needed some comfort because I was scared that all this sickness was going to affect the health of our unborn baby.

A Blessing

I remember that blessing so vividly. I remember the words he prayed. “I bless you that you will be healthy and that the baby will grow to be healthy and strong.” After hearing those words, that was all I needed. I felt complete comfort and reassurance that no matter what happened with my health it was all going to be ok.

I continued to be extremely sick after the blessing, but I carried the comfort with me of knowing my baby would still be healthy. A few weeks after that blessing we had been visiting Jake’s parents for a short trip and on the way home, we were in a car accident. I was sitting in the front passenger seat and from the accident, the whole front bumper and hood of our car were destroyed. Thankfully the airbags didn’t release, but by examination, the mechanic told us later it was a hair away from doing so. My seatbelt held me back but it still jolted me pretty hard around my midsection. I was extremely worried that the accident might have hurt my baby, or even caused its death.

I was feeling fine but wanted the peace of mind to know that everything was ok. I told my doctor what happened and he scheduled me to have an ultrasound. The ultrasound proved all to be just fine. I could see our little peanut kicking and punching as happy as could be. Everything checked out perfectly. The Doctor reassured me all was well with me and the baby.

The Rescue

Still quite sick and exhausted physically and mentally I needed more help than Jake was able to give me at the time. My mom called me and told me that my dad was flying out to pick me and my kids up to take us back to Missouri for a visit so my mom could help take care of me and my kids.

Dad came out and drove us back home. As the days went by I was finally starting to feel a little relief from nausea and vomiting. the anti-nausea pills seemed to finally be doing their job if I took them consistently. It was so good to be back home with family, I was able to get more sleep at night and have more naps to help me feel a little rejuvenated. We did all sorts of fun things went camping, played outside a lot, and just caught up with lots of family and friends.

After being home for a few weeks I felt so much better physically and mentally. I was ready to go back to Philadelphia and continue our regular lives again. Mom drove back with us to help me drive and I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for the next day after we would arrive home.

I was feeling great and that morning before getting out of bed I contemplated on the miracle of life that was growing inside me. I felt little washes of movement and I was excited because I had had similar experiences while I was pregnant with my other children as well. After I got up I got ready for my appointment. Before we left, we all knelt to say our regular family prayer together. Mom said the prayer and in her prayer, she said something that specifically stuck out to me. She said, “Bless the doctor to know what he should do”. I thought to myself “that is weird I wonder why she would need to bless the doctor to know what to do, this was just a standard 5-month pregnancy check-up.”

We got in the car and drove to my doctor’s office which just so happened to be in the annex of the hospital where I would eventually in a few months be delivering the baby. My mom dropped me off and took the kids to go play while I went to my appointment. I waited in the waiting room as usual, and then I was called back to meet with the Doctor. I had a new Doctor that day, (since I had been rotating through all of the practitioners in the practice since I had started going there) he seemed nice. I sat on the bed and he asked a myriad of questions trying to get to know me a little. I was telling him about my history and my pregnancy and mentioned that I had been taking antidepressant pills throughout my whole pregnancy. He continued to tell me that I probably shouldn’t be taking the medication while I was pregnant unless I really believed it was detrimental to my mental health. I reassured him that I thought it was. He explained that I might want to ween myself off of them before the baby was born so that my baby did not have withdrawals from not taking the medication. I told him I understood.

After about 30 minutes of chatting about my pregnancy, he asked me to lay on the table so he could get the baby’s heartbeat with his doppler. After about a minute of looking for the heartbeat, he said, “well I always have problems with this doppler it never works right, let’s walk down to the ultrasound room and do a quick ultrasound to make sure everything is alright”. Down the hall, I laid on the table again and he did a quick ultrasound and there the baby was, beautiful. I could see her tiny fingers and toes her head and her perfect beautiful baby body. But the ultrasound machine fizzled out after about a minute. I could see the Dr getting very frustrated. Banging on the machine a little, He made a quick call and after he hung up he said, “the Imaging wing of the hospital is just down the hall, I called ahead so they will be expecting you to get you right in”.

What is happening?

At this point in the visit, I started to panic. Why would I need to have another ultrasound? Why were his machines not working properly? I saw my beautiful baby, wasn’t everything alright? I quickly walked down to the other wing of the hospital and after a short wait, the Ultrasound tech brought me back to the room. once again I laid down and let her do the ultrasound. She turned the screen away from me so I could not see everything that she saw. Me worrying a lot by now asked her what was going on and if the baby was ok. (She must have been in a bad mood because she was very rude and short with her responses to me). She abruptly told me she could not tell me any information and that the Doctor would have to fill me in on the results.

This was my fourth pregnancy and I had had many ultrasounds in the past and by this point, I knew that by what she was telling me that everything was NOT ok. I immediately broke into tears and sobs.

The ultrasound tech sent me back down the hall to the Doctors office. He was waiting for me in his regular office at his desk by this point. I sat down and cried. He stood up and gave me a small hug and told me that he was sincerely sorry that the baby I was carrying had died. There were no signs of why she had died but that he wanted to reassure me it was not my fault and that it had nothing to do with the antidepressant medication I had been taking during my pregnancy.

He continued to explain to me the protocol that would need to happen from that point forward. He said because of the size of the baby I had 2 choices. I could either chose to be put into labor and birth the baby naturally that way, or I could choose to be put to sleep while they dilated my cervix and extracted the baby themselves.

It was a Friday and the facility where I would need to have the D&E (dilation and extraction) done did not have availabilities until the following Tuesday morning.

I was so shaken, I did not know which option to chose. So I asked him which one he thought would be the best for me. Flashes of my mom’s prayer went through my head, she had prayed that morning that the doctor would know what to do. He said because of the state I was in he felt that the D&E would be the best choice for me, because going through labor and delivery and then not having an alive baby as an outcome can be even more traumatizing than helpful. I made a call to my husband and explained everything to him. Hearing my sobs on the other end of the phone he left class immediately and rushed to the hospital to pick me up. Together we decided that we would follow the doctor’s advice and do the D&E.

It was a long sad weekend. I looked pregnant, I felt pregnant but the baby I still carried inside me was no longer living. It just so happened to be Mothers Day weekend. Which felt like a stab to the heart at the time. I was so grateful to be a mother to my 3 other beautiful children and felt so blessed for their lives, but it still was a little uncomfortable for me to go to church and celebrate that day knowing the loss we had just experienced.

I stayed home that Mother’s day and just spent time with my family.

Finally, Tuesday morning came and I had the procedure to extract the baby from inside of me. Angels accompanied me that day and I was going to be alright. Driving home after the procedure I felt a literal emptiness inside me I had never experienced before. How was I supposed to go on normally with my life after such a loss?

Returning home after that my 3 kids surrounded me with their hugs, they would not let me go. We cried together standing in the family room. They all told me in their tiny sweet voices they were sorry and sad too that the baby had died.

Friends and family sent meals and flowers, cards and notes. I felt and knew that I was supported and loved. The healing process for me was slow I felt, maybe because of the whole experience of the long hard months of being extremely sick, the car accident, the depression and anxiety, and the mistaken hope from the blessing all whirled around in my head like it was only a dream or even part nightmare.

I would often find myself questioning things like, “how could God promise me that this baby was going to be healthy and strong when she ultimately died inside of me a few months later?”, or “Would I ever be able to have another baby again”. “Why did this baby die?” “Was there something that I did to cause her death, was there something I could have done differently to change everything?”. “How could this happen to me?” Some days were filled with confusion and frustration, other days were just filled with sadness.

One day a few weeks later I received a small box in the mail. Wondering what it could be and not recognizing the address because I think it was shipped from amazon I opened it up. It was something padded by white styrofoam, finally, I managed to unpackage it. Inside I found a small little Willow Tree figurine. It was a little child dressed in white, holding a balloon. On the inside of the balloon was the word HOPE. As I set the figure on the dresser I realized the balloon was made to appear to be lifting the child up.

Along with the figurine was a sweet note that my friend Lexie had added to the order. It said something to the effect of, “I am so sorry you are going through this hard time in your life. I am so sorry for your loss. Know that I am thinking of you and praying for you. Remember if you have nothing else to hold onto, Hold onto Hope, let it lift you when nothing else seems to be able to”.

Her words were like a magic wand to my soul. I had not felt hope in what seemed to be a very long time. I had managed to lose it somewhere along the way. I had let worry and confusion take its place. Both of which had brought me down instead of lifting me up again like I longed to be.

After her sincere gesture of love, during the days to follow, I decided to find a tiny piece of hope in my soul and cling to that. I clung to the fact that I knew my Heavenly Father loved me no matter what situations, sorrows, depression, or anxiety I would experience during this earth’s life.

Months days and now 8 years have passed since we lost our sweet baby. I remember when it happened people would say to me, just give it time, it will get better, or time will heal your soul. At the time it hurt to hear those words from people because I was not able to feel it myself, the future of hope seemed bleak.

Now as time has passed I don’t think I would change a single thing in my life. Not because I enjoy suffering or experiencing hard things in the least. But because it has helped me be able to empathize with others who have lost as well. I would have always expected hope to just magically appear through my struggles and I might still be waiting for it to come to me. But through hard things eventually, we heal we grow, and sometimes we are able to lift others along the way. I have seen my loved ones and others I know experience such things as the death of a child (or children), a spouse, heartache, other loss, illness, and misfortune of all sorts. But they have taught me no matter what happens in their life they still hold on to that hope, and through time they allow it to lift them, and they use it to lift others along the way.

So even to this day at times, I continue to have dark days filled with fog that makes it impossible to see my future but through it all I will continue to hold onto that piece of hope, that through Christ all things will make perfect eternal sense in the end.

HOLD ON TO HOPE… IT WILL LIFT YOU.

xo Sara