Beautiful life: A eulogy to our unborn child

WARNING:  Graphic content related to miscarriage

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Tonight we buried our little baby.  No longer than the finger nail of my pinky, opaque and beautiful.  Nothing could have prepared me for the emotion I would feel when I saw that little formed body just beneath the translucent sac that had once developed to nurture it and protect it.  It was obvious when I passed the gestational sac earlier this evening.  There it lay, surrounded in the soft cushion of my uterine lining.  I had been waiting for it all day.  Early this morning, I had taken the misoprostol.  I was hopeful that everything would pass with a single dose but didn’t know when or how it would go.  Mostly I have been emotionally numb since learning this past Wednesday that there was no longer a heartbeat and that our baby had died.  But my emotions ripped to the surface as I held this little life between my fingers.  I went and grabbed my husband and he too was shaken out of his own numbness.  This was it.  This was the little life we have been praying for, hoping for, and loving for so long.  This is the little life that had already been through so much.  Created via IVF almost two years and then frozen for most of that tme.  After a short thaw in April, it had quickly found a snug little home deep inside me where it grew as best it could.  Within weeks of it making its home within me, it endured uncontrollable retching, it’s mother with acute appendicitis and subsequent surgery.  Somehow it endured.  It would seem that so many would give up on this precious being two weeks later when an initial ultrasound revealed no heartbeat.  We were told to stop our medications, that it was pointless, that the pregnancy wasn’t viable.  Instead, we held out for a miracle and waited.  This little embryo defied all odds and continued to grow over the following week.  5 days later, at our ultrasound that was meant to confirm death, instead showed a beautiful little life with a steady heartbeat.  We celebrated the miraculous and praised God for this tiny person.  In the end, it wasn’t meant to be.  At least not on this side of heaven.  We trust and believe with all our hearts that this little life is dancing with Jesus.  We find comfort in the knowledge that he already knows LOVE truer and deeper than any found here on earth.  This little life waits to be reunited with his earthly family, for the only family he has known.  But he waits with strength and courage, for he has found peace with Jesus.

Tonight we buried our baby.  We found the perfect spot.  We dug a hole and we placed him in the ground.   Many tears were shed and fervent prayers were offered up.  It was a precious moment shared between my husband and I under the darkened sky.

For us, he will always be in our hearts.  We are forever grateful to God for allowing us these few treasured weeks together.