Every baby is special, every life is important, and every Mom wants to show off her baby. For those of us who lose our babies too soon, we don’t ever get to show them off and we rarely get to say their names or tell people about them. In our country, thousands of babies are stillborn every year, roughly one every twenty minutes. There are even more miscarriages. Here on my blog, I want to remember all of the lost babies and give their parents an opportunity to show them off. These Mamas are so proud of their babies and are going to share them with us here. We honor these little lives by acknowledging their presence with us, even if it was a very short time. Do you know how these babies are loved? Do you know that each baby was cherished by their families, even if they left only after a few weeks? Do you know how these babies are missed every single day? Please pray for these families, who have to live every day without their precious children.

BABY BOHN

My husband and I got married Aug 20, 2011, three days before my 30th birthday. Everyone asked us right from the get-go when we were going to have kids. My husband’s coy reply was always “In 2 years”, even after we’d been married for a year! We had discussed that we wanted to wait 2 years to try for a baby, so around Christmas 2012, we decided that since it usually can take up to 6 months to conceive once you actively start TTC, we were going to start trying in May 2013.

May came and went with no BFP. The 2 week wait that month was the longest 2 weeks of my life! June and July also came and went and I started losing hope that it would be as easy as we thought it would be.

In August, we had booked a hotel room in the Twin Cities for our anniversary/my birthday. We had a wonderful time and were relaxed and at ease the whole week. September 4th, I was supposed to go to work, when I woke up with a terrible tooth ache. The whole side of my face was swelled up and I ended up calling in to work and having to get my tooth pulled. I remember the dentist asking if I could possibly be pregnant. Since it was during the 2 week wait for that cycle, I told her yes, even though in my heart, I was seriously doubting it since I’d been disappointed the previous three months. Just to be on the safe side though, I told them it was possible and they took all the necessary precautions. I was then given Vicodin for pain relief and sent home. I only took the medicine twice because the pain wasn’t that bad, for which I was grateful. The rest of the time I used 2 ibuprofen, and that was only a couple times.

On Sept 9th, I called my mom and mentioned to her that my period was due the next day and that if I didn’t get it, I would test the following morning. I told her my breasts were tender, but that was normal right before my period. Sept 10th came, but my period did not, so the morning of Sept 11th, I took the pregnancy test. I wasn’t expecting much, but I just wanted to be sure. I laid it on the counter, cleaned up the bathroom a little bit, and when I went to look at the test, there was my faint second line! I was so shocked that I didn’t believe it. My husband was at work and wouldn’t be on his lunch break for a couple more hours. I ran to Walmart to get another test, a different brand, just to make sure that it wasn’t a false positive. Sure enough, another faint line!

At that point, my first emotion was despair and guilt… why would God let me finally get pregnant when I had been using these drugs that could harm the baby?! I burst into heart-wrenching sobs and just cried out to God until I had no tears left. Then, once I had control of my emotions again, I started to feel this unexplainable joy begin to blossom in my heart. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face! My whole life, from the time I was old enough to know what babies were, I knew I wanted to be a wife and a mother. That had been my only dream for my life, above career, location… everything else paled in comparison to this longing in my heart.

I gathered up the positive tests and text my husband that I was going to come to his work and have lunch with him. Because we talked daily about whether the next test would be positive, when I showed him the positives, he wasn’t really surprised, but he was excited!

I went to the doctor that morning just to confirm that I was indeed pregnant. They told me that yes I was and my due date was May 17, 2014. I was walking on air during the whole appointment and the nurse was laughing because I couldn’t quit smiling. I was so excited because the timing was perfect. Since our wedding was in my birthday month, I wanted our baby to be born in my husband’s birthday month. My due date was 10 days after his birthday! It couldn’t have worked out any better than if I’d been able to plan it all on purpose!

I made a mental list of everyone I wanted to tell and in what order to tell them. I called my mom and told her I wanted to have lunch. We met up at a thrift store for some girl shopping time and I had the positive tests sitting on the passenger seat of my truck. I told her I had something for her in the truck and to come get it. She looked in there, picked up the tests, stared at them long and hard and said “Really?? I’m gonna be a grandma?!?!” We laughed and cried and hugged and she was just as excited as I was!

From there, it was a series of telling other family and friends. My aunt and family friend were the next to find out later that day. I wanted my dad there, but I wouldn’t see him until a few days later. It killed me to have to keep quiet until then, but I wanted him to be one of the first to know. He was so excited for us and it was worth the wait! Finally I was able to post it on Facebook after we told my husband’s family. Everyone we knew was so happy for us, knowing how badly I wanted a baby.

My only symptoms in the following weeks were extremely sore breasts, food didn’t taste good and my appetite was cut in half. My mom told me that was all that happened to her when she was pregnant with me, so I was hoping that would be the extent of my symptoms for the duration of the pregnancy. I told everyone at work that I was expecting, partly because I couldn’t keep it to myself and partly because I worked in retail and it can be very physically demanding at times.

Everything was going smoothly and I was keeping daily track of the fetal development. At 6 weeks, I posted on Facebook that the baby’s heart started beating that week! I was thrilled that in a few weeks, I’d be getting my first ultrasound and would hear the baby’s heartbeat!

At 7 weeks along, on the morning of Sept 29th, I got up for work and gave my husband a hug goodbye. I told him that it was weird, but my breasts didn’t hurt so bad that morning. I was glad because it was getting hard to cuddle with him when I couldn’t even rest my chest against him without extreme discomfort. I went to work and felt fine all morning. I had some mild cramping, but I had had that since I found out I was pregnant and mentioned it to the nurse, who said it was normal. Around noon, I went to use the restroom, and I saw there was a noticeable amount of blood in my panties. My heart dropped to my stomach and started to panic. I calmed myself down enough to leave the bathroom and decided to take my lunch break early so I could call the nurse hotline. The nurse said that I should go home and rest and if the bleeding got worse, to go to the ER, but that he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. But I knew that he was wrong. I knew that I was having a miscarriage. I went back into work and called my manager and told her that I thought I was having a miscarriage. I started crying while I was telling her and told her I was leaving for the day and I would keep her updated.

I called my husband and told him that I was bleeding and that I thought I was losing the baby. He told me to just get home so I could rest, so I got off the phone with him and called my mom. Her landlord worked at the hospital and she told my mom if I was bleeding, it was a good chance that the baby was already gone. My mom and I cried together on the phone until I got home, then, weeping, I fell into my husband’s arms and we just stood there, mourning the moment. I cried until I was exhausted, knowing that my dreams of becoming a mother to this child were shattered.

Throughout the afternoon, evening, and into the next morning, my body expelled all the tissue that had been sustaining the little life in my womb. Every hour I would get out of bed and collect more of what came out, so that I could bring it to the doctor the next day. As soon as the clinic opened that morning, I called and made an appointment. I cried through the whole thing. The midwife looked at the tissue I had brought in and said that it was definitely placental tissue and that it was evidence of a miscarriage.

I felt so empty. I felt like it must’ve been my fault for using the medication I’d been given for pain before I knew I was pregnant. The midwife assured me that miscarriage is just one of those things that happens more often than most people are aware, and that there is nothing that I did to cause it, and nothing I could’ve done to prevent it.

I went home and grieved through the day with my husband. The next day, we started calling our family and posted on Facebook that our baby went to be with Jesus. All our friends and family were as devastated as we were. We had a lot of support from everyone we knew, and people started telling us how they had gone through similar circumstances. It was so hard, but I was very grateful for the people God had placed in our lives, and their compassion for us in our darkest hours.

A few days later, my mom came over to keep me company so I wouldn’t be alone, and I told her the details of what happened. I told her that I didn’t think the baby had passed yet, or if it had, that I had missed it, and that it made me sad because if I had the baby, then I would be able to have a feeling of closure. Later that day, after my mom had left, I used the restroom, and one little piece of something came out that was different from everything else that had passed initially. It was the right size and shape to have been my baby, and I’m 98% sure that it was. I had a strange peace after that. I felt fiercely protective of this little life that never made it past 7 weeks formed.

That week, my husband and I took our baby, wrapped in a brand new blanket, and we buried our firstborn beneath a tree in my mom’s woods. We didn’t name our baby since we didn’t know the gender, but I know that God has a name for every life that He creates, and He has given our baby the perfect name in Heaven. I can’t wait to meet my child!

It has been almost 9 months and my baby’s due date has come and gone. It was a bittersweet time for me because of all the “could have been’s”. But I know that my baby is happy and healthy in God’s arms and if they can’t be in mine, there’s no other place I’d want them to be!

My husband and I are still trying to conceive again, but as of yet have been unsuccessful. I have surrendered our situation to the Lord and we are waiting on His timing. I praise Him that I got to be a mommy to my tiny little one even if for only a few weeks!

Thank you to Baby Bohn’s mommy for sharing her precious child’s story with us. I love seeing proud mama’s honoring their babies, regardless of how early they lost them. For all of you reading this, I would like to ask for you to pray for Tanya. Will you pray that God gives her a healthy rainbow baby SOON? I know how hard it is to wait and wait and wait for your baby of hope to come after losing a child. It is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life. Please pray that she doesn’t even have to wait one more month and that this next baby will end up healthy and screaming in her arms.

If you would like to share your baby’s story, just e-mail me at bethanysk55@yahoo.com You can share whatever you want about your baby, and you don’t have to include your name if you don’t want to. Also, I think your baby is just as important if you lost him/her at 6 weeks or at 40 weeks. Even if you never knew the sex of your baby, you might have had names picked out, a due date and lots of hopes and dreams for that child. All of that is important and is welcome here.