Miscarriage and Motherhood: Finding God in Silence and Noise

The doctor frowned. Silence.

He clicked off the machine, his eyes crinkling. “I’m sorry not to have better news.”

I looked at my husband. Neither of us spoke, but his eyes asked the question. How did I feel? Air seeped out of my chest. We’d been preparing for this since the first ultrasound one week ago. We’d known then when we’d seen only a dot on the screen where there should have been a tiny head and body, that the odds of miscarriage were high.

All week we’d held out hope. At night we sang songs to the “little bird” we pictured still growing in my womb. Watched our toddler stomp-dance around the living room table, and imagined two dancers, two sets of stomping feet. Maybe I wasn’t as far along as I’d thought. Maybe we’d return to the doctor’s office in a week, hear that thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Now, silence.

All week we’d prayed. Had I really believed God would intervene? The sinking in my chest told me part of me had. Not because we were more deserving of a miracle than others…but because it had seemed motherhood was God’s way of calling me closer to Him.

Nothing had made me turn to God like my first year of motherhood had. After 14 hours of labor, when between moans I wondered, how much longer? Was my baby going to make it out ok? I repeated the mantra — Thy Will Be Done.

Back at work, after a night punctuated by newborn cries, when and I had to ask again, “Could you repeat the question?” From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, Jesus. When my fussy toddler wouldn’t eat, and SPLAT another glob of avocado landed on the floor I’d just cleaned. Lord, grant me patience.

Over time, things got easier. Our son started sleeping through the night. I learned to move through the house picking up toys off the floor with one hand and a baby on my hip, dumping a load of laundry in one machine, and grabbing the dry towels from the other. I started laughing at my mistakes at work instead of fighting the urge to cry.

We were ready for another baby.

The doctor explained our options in a soft voice. I nodded along with his words, half-listening.

I was ready to cradle a newborn while helping my fidgety toddler into his high chair. Ready for nursery rhymes tinkling from the baby mobile at two separate nap times. Ready to once again wake and answer cries in the middle of the night.

Yes, it would have been exhausting, but it was going to be worth it. I’d come out on the other side stronger, more resilient. There would be two sets of feet pitter-pattering down the hall, two sticky, grinning faces making my heart glow.

The doctor asked if we had any questions. I shook my head. My husband and I exited the building without speaking. In the car, I put my face in my hands. I gasped out the last of the hopes I’d held inside. My husband took my hand, squeezed it. My hand, my heart, squeezed.

My mom greeted us at the door with my son in her arms. I reached for him and held him tight to my chest. I listened to the sound of his heart — thump, thump, thump, thump, thump. Side by side in my chest, I carried my children, a crush of love, and a hollow.

Time passed. Some days it was almost as if nothing had happened. I’d laugh at a coworker’s joke, make one of my own in reply. I clapped my hands with my toddler, grinned when he learned to answer my question:

“What does the doggy say?” — “Va!!”

Other days I opened my computer, registered the unanswered messages and meeting invitations, and shut it. I climbed down from the couch, dropped to my knees.

Rarely outside of the church had I gotten down on my knees to pray. It was enough to speak or think the words from a comfortable seated position. Now it was as if the gravity of loss was pulling me to the ground.

I’d kneel, recite the rhythmic prayers of the rosary, the beads slipping through my fingers. Time slowed down, the chirp of birds and roar of a lawnmower outside faded. I savored the stillness, the quiet, the soft burning glow in my chest.

When I finished, I got up. My body was lighter, the weight of grief wasn’t gone, but it dispersed throughout my body.

On a Saturday morning, I got up early with my son, sipped my coffee as he sipped his milk. We took a long walk through our neighborhood. Leaves crunched under my feet and the sun climbed pink and hazy over the hilltops. Had fall mornings always been so beautiful? We stopped at an intersection and watched the cars go by. A truck roared past, my son’s face lit up and he pointed, “Gun-ga!”

At home, I sat him in his chair for breakfast, kissed my husband as he took over the feeding. I hopped in the car and drove 30 minutes to the nearest church offering Adoration outdoors. I knelt in the parking lot, bowed my head, and basked in the warmth emanating from the Monstrance in the window.

A few miles away lived a friend of mine who just had a new baby. Her older daughter is three months older than my son.

I pictured her and imagined how right now, God might be calling to her. Through the cries and laughter of two little mouths, the warmth of two little bodies. Calling her too in the fog of postpartum hormones, sleepless nights, the two sets of needs pressing day and night.

I had thought that that was how God wanted to draw me closer this year — by doubling the joys and sacrifices of motherhood. I hadn’t considered how God could call me in the silence, and the space to be still.

I stood up in the parking lot, tucked away my rosary beads. Thirty minutes later I was home just before my son’s nap time. He greeted me with a wide-eyed grin, charged toward me, “Maamaa!” I scooped him up, and together we plopped down on the couch. We turned the pages of Little Blue Truck, slowly.

I carried him to his crib, his head resting heavily on my shoulder. I lay him down, slipped out the door, and shut it with a soft click. I retreated to the quiet of my den. I curled up on the couch and opened my laptop to write.

I tapped words onto the screen, exploring the small hollow that is still there in the corner of my chest. God didn’t fill it with another heartbeat, but He is using that space to call me closer. Slowly, quietly.