I paced back and forth. I distracted myself by doing some dishes. Three minutes never felt so long. I finally walked back into the bathroom and slowly looked down at the test.
Two pink lines.
I was pregnant. I was PREGNANT. I did a happy dance around the bathroom as tears streamed down my face. I couldn’t wait to tell Chris when he got home.
He was so surprised and we hugged and laughed and stared at each other in shock. We were going to be parents!! We then began discussing when we should tell family and friends.
We were headed out of town that evening to see my family in Chattanooga. My little sister was graduating from high school and the whole family would be there.
“Do you think we could tell them, or should we wait?”
We decided on the way that we would tell them and Chris’ family, but no one else until later. After all, what if we lost the baby?
Well we did lose the baby. The morning after I told my family, I woke up bleeding and we rushed to the emergency room. There was nothing they could do. This kind of thing is very common, the doctor told me.
Common, maybe. But that day my baby died. And it didn’t matter that I had only known about him/her for a few days, I loved that child. And now he was gone.
I cried for several days straight. As time passed, it slowly got better. But there were painful little reminders everywhere I went, it seemed. I attended my sister-in-law’s baby shower and I was so excited about welcoming their precious little girl into the world, but at the same time I had to swallow hard thinking about the little life that would never be welcomed with a shower in his or her preparation.
I wondered if it would have been a boy or a girl. What would he have grown up to be? Would he have looked like me or Chris? The grief I felt was real.
A life had been lost.
And no one but a few close friends and family knew. Miscarriages are common and hush-hush, after all. It’s not the same as losing a real baby.
That’s when it all began to hit me.
Why in the world do we wait in sharing our pregnancy news?! Does it make it more of a “real baby” after the 12 week mark? Or is it more the fear that after we share our happy news that we will have to re-send out sad news that we lost the child?
But aren’t we grieving anyway?
If we as Christians truly believe that life begins at conception, why don’t we grieve as a community when we lose a child in utero? Doesn’t that child deserve just as much love and grief as a child we lose outside of the womb?
I feel that the views our culture holds on pregnancy and children has seeped into our minds without us knowing it. We have been deceived into feeling that a baby really isn’t a baby until after a certain point of development. That cluster of cells isn’t a person.
But that “cluster of cells” resembles a human and has a heartbeat after just two weeks. At a month old you can see arms and legs on an ultrasound. That is a baby. An image bearer of God Most High (Gen.1:26-27).
“For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.” Psalm 139:13
So why do we feel the need to keep it a secret that we are carrying a child until our chances of losing that child are smaller? Regardless of the timing, a life is still lost.
I think it’s time for us to turn the tide. If we are Christians, and truly believe that life begins at conception, what is there to fear? If more people started sharing they were expecting earlier, do you think it could have an impact on our culture and how we view pregnancy and life inside the womb? Are we willing to embrace the uncomfortable to truly walk in what we believe about conception and life?
“We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life without diminishing the value of all human life.” – Ronald Reagan
This topic has been heavy on my heart for months, and I’ve been wrestling and reasoning through it and I have decided to really start thinking about this in light of what I believe from Scripture, and no longer let my culture shape the way I think.
Will you join me?
The Carolina Farmhouse 