The Children We’ll Meet in Heaven
By Nicole McCormick
July 2021 was an exciting month for me. I was only two months into a new marriage; I was changing jobs to cut an hour and a half commute down to twenty minutes, and I had just found out I was pregnant with our first child. I was in such denial initially. My body gave me all the usual symptoms of my cycle about to start, but it just never started. It was a rare thing for my cycle to be late, but I felt sure it was coming. Then it struck me just how late I actually was – two weeks. That was unheard of! While my husband was at a late-night meeting, I slipped over to the pharmacy and picked up some pregnancy tests. When those two blue lines appeared immediately (forget waiting 2-5 minutes) it was surreal. Over the next two weeks we shared the news with our parents, but otherwise kept it discreet since the pregnancy was still in such an early stage. It’s a decision I’m extremely glad we made, because on July 30th, I woke up bleeding. A small spot in the morning had me concerned, but it grew into a torrent by the following day, and I knew for sure. I was losing my child. I hadn’t had the privilege of knowing his existence for more than two weeks, and he was already being ripped from me. I was in shock. The entire weekend, I was curled around a heating pad, breathing through the sharp pains that wracked my body. I barely ate or engaged in anything outside of surviving those moments. It was months before I truly began to process the trauma of having lost a child.
There are many women who find themselves in similar situations, but don’t talk about it. It was the not-talking-about-it that failed me as I tried to process my loss. No other women among my family or friends had experienced a miscarriage, so I turned to social media, where I recalled two people from my college years who had miscarried. I reread their posts. They were touching and helped me know I wasn’t alone, but I needed more than social media gave me. I had to seek out much of it alone, so in no particular order, I’ve compiled it here as a resource that will hopefully be helpful to you or women you know.
1. You are a mother.
As a friend once told me, “You are not any less a mom than the pregnant women you see around you. Your motherhood is still valid and beautiful.” You carried a life inside you, for however long, and you’ll carry your love and loss for your child forever.
2. Don’t expect your husband to feel the same as you about the loss.
We’ve all heard it said that everyone grieves differently. Well, in the case of miscarriage, some may not grieve at all, particularly husbands. My miscarriage was at such an early stage of pregnancy, that, while my husband was excited about our child, losing him was more impersonal for my husband than for me. I had spent the past two weeks feeling my womb expand, watching what I was eating, taking the right vitamins, and – less glamorously – drinking a lot of prune juice and Metamucil because of the life growing inside me. I was already making sacrifices, building plans, and developing a relationship with this little life. My husband did not, and the loss did not process the same way with him. While I was crying openly, he appeared stoic. While I was naming the child, he could not recall right away what name we had chosen. He was loving and supportive through it all, but his loss was not my loss. If your husband has a similar reaction, don’t be angry at him; instead, recognize this as one of the beautiful sacrifices of being a mother: to have known your child best, even in the early weeks of pregnancy, and to have felt the loss more keenly as a result.
3. Have others pray for you.
Though I did not tell my friends I was pregnant, I did tell them immediately when I was miscarrying. They were a source of great comfort, sending prayers and condolences, offering beautiful gifts to remember my child by. It was humbling for me to discover that even months later, they continue to pray for my family as part of their daily rosary. Hopefully, you have people like this in your life, too.
4. Pray to Mother Mary and the saints.
Our Holy Mother has experienced the loss of a Child, One she raised well into adulthood and One whose torture and last breathes she witnessed. Allowing her pierced heart to comfort my own was an intense source of healing. You may also find other saints’ stories and intercession helpful: St. Gianna Molla, St. Anne, Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, and, of course, St. Catherine of Sweden, Patron Saint of Miscarriage and Recovery from Miscarriage.
5. Have good health care professionals and take your husband (or a loved one) with you.
I felt frustrated by my health care experience and, as a result, will interview my next potential care provider about how they handle miscarriages. My OB/GYN was a Creighton approved NaPro technician and natural fertility care specialist, but I think there is still much that can be learned from my encounter. The day my bleeding started, the doctor told me two things: (1) Don’t go to the ER; there’s nothing they can do. (2) I don’t have any availability until next week. Now, she was kind enough to squeeze me onto her schedule during what would normally be her lunch break, at least that’s what she told me as I talked to her, and she added a note to the appointment indicating why I was coming, so as not to be confused with all the healthy, happy, pregnant women being seen that day. I endured my painful weekend on the couch, making it through to the following Thursday. Upon arriving 10-15 minutes early for my appointment, I then waited an hour before being seen. Everyone who interacted with me expected that I was one of the happy, healthy, pregnant women; I brushed this off in the moment, because I knew the doctor would know why I was here, and that’s really who I had to talk to. Then the doctor came in, and she didn’t know why I was there. I burst into tears while telling her. There were no tissues in the exam room. She handed me a roll of toilet paper instead. She took me back for further examination. As I disrobed, I had to further explain to my doctor that I was still actively bleeding. Surprised by this, she scrambled to provide a disposable absorbent pad for me to sit on. During the examination, the type and invasive nature of which I was unaware of and unprepared for and none of which was explained to me, she identified something as a good “teaching moment” and asked if her new midwife could come in to see it. I said “yes” in the moment, because how else can one learn, but I felt my privacy violated, and my doctor’s sensitivity lacking. I was in survival mode the entire experience. It was surreal and required its own processing and healing later. The only part of the visit that I felt went well was my decision to have my husband drive me (I was in no state to drive after the appointment) and attend with me. I could not have made it through the experience without his hand to hold.
6. Have a funeral or special reminder.
While I was miscarrying, it occurred to me as strange that I would essentially be flushing my child down a toilet. In my mentally frozen and, frankly, traumatized state, it didn’t occur to me that I could do anything else. How does one handle a miscarriage? No one had talked to me about this before. It was not in any of my pregnancy books. I was unprepared and culture of silence around miscarriages is partly to blame.
I recently heard a novel idea on the Among the Lilies podcast Episode 207 where the guest speaker discussed her own miscarriage. She recommended saving your blood and burying it, because somewhere in there is the small body of your child, and he deserves a proper burial. It’s something I will do should I miscarry again.
If this sounds a little extreme to you, or perhaps you don’t have a yard or place to bury your child, then having a symbolic funeral, special place of prayer, or other icon may be healing for you. Friends gifted me a beautiful print with this quote from St. Zelie Martin: “We shall find our little ones again up above.” This touching reminder hangs above my mirror to see every day as I get ready and will serve as a special indicator of Matthew until we have a permanent home which allows me to set up a dedicated place of remembrance in the garden.
7. Name your child.
This one is perhaps the easiest and most natural response to a miscarriage. Instead of saying “baby” or “child,” I’m so glad I can call Matthew by his name. We have no idea if he was a boy or not, but it doesn’t matter. He has an identity and is able to be discussed with love and dignity by name.
8. Tell people when you’re ready.
I am now 7 months past my miscarriage, and there are people who are very dear to me that I’ve only just told about Matthew. There are also those people in my life who I told the very day that it was happening. You know whose support you need and you know when you’re ready to tell others. Take your time.
9. Grieving is a cyclical process and will surprise you when you least expect it.
I was very stoic about my miscarriage at the beginning. I didn’t cry right away. I thought that meant it didn’t affect me, but, in reality, I was just in shock. I didn’t know how to process it, so I moved on with my life. Then I’d have unexpected reminders that would instantly cause me to dissolve into tears, and I didn’t understand it. A section of poem read aloud during my book club would make me emotional enough that I couldn’t finish voicing my thoughts. A friend would announce a pregnancy, and I couldn’t rejoice with them. Sitting behind a family full of beautiful children would cause me to cry through an entire mass. It wasn’t until I started taking it to adoration, sharing these experiences with my spouse, and journaling about them in private, that I began to process my loss. (Might I also suggest therapy? I never sought out a counselor myself, but I’m sure it would have helped immensely.) While processing and understanding your grief is powerful and medicinal for the soul, it does not mean that it will ever entirely leave you. Just as Mother Mary’s heart is still pierced by the loss of her Son, so our hearts will forever be changed by the loss of a child. The jarring reminders and emotional moments will come farther apart, but they will still come. Only last week, I had an unexpected exchange that left me in tears: I recently switched dentists, so the first visit required X-rays. When the technician led me to the machine, I stopped them and indicated that I didn’t know yet if I was pregnant or not. The technician, a beautiful, petite Hispanic woman with a Spanish-speaking accent, gave me a big hug and told me about her own three miscarriages. She said she would never want me to go through such pain. After rescheduling my appointment, I went and wept in my car. I was not the only one carrying this wound; this middle-aged woman whose children are now grown was still carrying the burden of her losses decades later. Our children never leave us.
10. Know that you carry them with you.
Have you ever heard of cell migration? Fetal cells from pregnancy pass from the child to the mother and are detectable in the mother’s blood as early as 4 weeks and 5 days into pregnancy. They then stick around for decades, with one mother even demonstrating the continued presence of fetal cells 27 years after her last child was born. These cells are known to help heal mothers’ bodies, targeting injuries, changing into heart muscle, liver cells, even neurons as needed. The child continues to live on in you and even heal you from the inside out. They are giving you the gift of their bodies even as it has been taken from you.
11. You have achieved every Christian mother’s goal: your child is in heaven.
There is some confusion within Catholic circles about children dying in miscarriage or otherwise before they could be baptized. Did these children go to limbo – a state of general happiness but not of heaven and the Lord’s presence? While limbo is a theory generally accepted in Catholic theology as a place for those people who died before Christ’s coming, and while even prominent theologians like St. Augustine taught that this “border” world of limbo was a place for unbaptized children to go after death, it has never been Church doctrine. We are free to reject it.
In fact, it occurs to me that limbo would be in direct contrast to the words of Christ telling us: “Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” (Mark 10:4) We recognize that God does not expect the impossible, so why should He expect an unborn child to be baptized? He doesn’t. These innocent children are exactly that – innocent. While they have not had the opportunity to receive baptism, they have also not had the opportunity to reject God through mortal sin, and God will not reject them. Have comfort that Christ is taking care of your child, and you now have a personal saint to pray to. St. Matthew McCormick, pray for us.
12. Pass on your story.
The more we demystify miscarriage, bringing it out of the dark and into conversation, the more we recognize the mothers of miscarriage and child loss and give them the support they need. I desperately wished I’d had someone who knew what I was experiencing to talk to, but I only had a few social media posts to fall back on to know that I was not alone in my experience. This frustrated me, and eventually led to this article, though it took time. I originally proposed this article to Carolyn, founder of the YCW, almost 6 months ago, but I didn’t have the heart to write it till now. I had doubts about how my story would be received and my personal motives for sharing it. Was I just seeking attention? What did I intend to achieve with this article? Eventually, my prayer life gave me the nudge I needed to recognize that this is not an article for me, but for others, and that completely changed the format that it took. Instead of simply an autobiographical account, it became what you see here, with what are hopefully some helpful nuggets of wisdom. I only hope you’ll do the same with your friends and family, sharing your experience of miscarriage and child loss when you are ready. Doing so will open that door of discussion for the next woman who may miscarry, so she may be better prepared for her experience, may feel less lonely, may better recognize her identity as a mother, and may receive more peace and healing.
This page has additional links to helpful websites for those who have miscarried or had stillbirths.
