Lenten Booknote 1: After Miscarriage by Karen Edmisten

I've been jumping around in my Lenten reading so far. I started The Fifth Vital Sign the day before Lent began (Mardi Gras day, but that's hardly relevant). I started Reflections on the Psalms the day after Ash Wednesday. And then I started a book that my friend Melanie Bettinelli of The Wine Dark Sea sent to me as I was grappling with the aftermath of the early miscarriage of an unexpected pregnancy in January. (All of it was in January--the pregnancy and the miscarriage. But the experience can't be contained so neatly.) The book is After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman's Companion to Healing & Hope by Karen Edmisten. I may someday write about the experience; for today, I want to start to write some of my responses to After Miscarriage. Perhaps these (relatively) quick booknotes will help me get into a writing routine and also sort out some thoughts about the experience itself.

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#1 - "There's no evidence of it, but I'm a mother." p. 8

I have had many reactions while reading After Miscarriage, short though it is. Some are points of disagreement--mainly acknowledging that how I see the world, how I perceive God in many cases, is different from the ideas that the contributors (usually) express as part of their healing process. This is fine, and does not diminish the book for me. Those moments give me points to think about too, and I'll be working through those. But page 8 was my first really profound point of connection.

One of my disconnects with most of the writing I've seen about miscarriage is that so much of it comes from women who are grappling with infertility and the desire to have a child. Quite often it is the overwhelming burden of childlessness that brings grief as much as the loss of this particular child. This statement is the voice of a woman who longs for the children she seems and is unable to have--a mother who has suffered multiple losses and whose arms and womb are empty as a result. I differ because I have not been longing for another child--the baby we lost was very much a surprise, and difficult to process and adjust to, but nevertheless loved and longed for. Also, I already have children--three, one of whom is has grown to adulthood. It was very surreal to think about revisiting the earlier stages of life while also having one 12, one 14, and one 23. I have evidence that I am a mother.  And yet... this resonated. Strongly. Because one of my refrains has been, "I was pregnant. But I have nothing to show for it." I can't prove that I was pregnant.

Except... I actually can. It's not much, but it's all I have. On Saturday, January 4, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. I never doubted it. I had been suspecting anyway. But it just seemed so... yes, the word is still "surreal." I just couldn't quite shake the feeling that it wasn't quite real, that I hadn't dreamed it somehow. So since it was a double pack (that I actually bought last May and never used), I took the second test, on January 14. And out of some odd, documentary impulse, I took a picture, so that I could look at it and think about it using a tangible sign. Only now does it occur to me how very Catholic that feels. Eleven days later, I would begin to bleed.

And now I don't have anything to show for it. I can prove I was pregnant, sort of--though I never did have that medical validation. It is readily apparent that I am a mother (something not every mother who has lost a pregnancy has). But right here, right now, after this pregnancy and the promise of this child, I have nothing. My husband said to me one night as I expressed this idea (and I sobbed--though I thought I was fine), "For a little while, we were the parents of four children."** But we can't prove it. There is nothing to show. And that feels important.



** - Just so no one quibbles over semantics, I do know that we are still the parents of four children. As much as I love words, they are sometimes quite inadequate to express the immensity of feeling, or the nuances of meaning.