Acknowledging the unseen

“How many kids do you have?” seems like a simple enough question, but it sends me into a tailspin: Do I tell them my story? Do I tell them how many miscarriages I’ve had right here, right now? They only see three children, but will it make it awkward if I say I have five? If I say five, they will most likely be confused and possibly say something awkward. Do I make it awkward for them so I feel better? Do I stuff down my feelings to help them not feel awkward?

My husband and I have three beautiful girls who the Lord has given us the privilege to raise here on this earth. We also have two babies He has taken into heaven before we had a chance to meet them. Losing children, no matter their age, is one of the most difficult trials to endure. But when you are a hopeful couple, excited at the prospect of bringing life into the world, and it is suddenly ripped away from you by the claws of death, it is brutal. One of the hardest parts of losing babies during pregnancy is not having the ability to know much about them. We didn’t get to know their sex, we didn’t get to name them, and we didn’t find out whose nose they had or whose eye color was passed down. Hardest of all, we don’t have any pictures of them around our house. It’s hard to remember our babies or celebrate their lives when we don’t have a gravestone to sit beside or a picture to walk by.

It’s not anyone’s fault, but this awkwardness is always hanging around. These little ones are part of our family. I carried one baby for 12 weeks and another for seven. They were knit in my womb, had heartbeats and body parts, and were created by our Creator just as our other three daughters who are here with us. They probably did carry some of our family traits like our other daughters: blue or hazel eyes, the smooshed “Walker” nose, thick and wavy hair from my side of the family, and those perfectly straight eyebrows and long lashes from their dad. I may not get to know what each baby looked like or if they would have grown up to be artistic like my oldest daughter or a little performer like our youngest, but God knows. He was creatively knitting their little lives together in the same unique ways as He did the daughters I’ve gotten to meet, hold, and watch grow into lovely children. I can praise Him because I know that He carefully and wonderfully made my children—all five of them (Psalm 139:13–14).

The only difference between my three living daughters and my two babies in heaven is that the two I never got to hold didn’t make it through the entirety of their development to their birth. But I carried them for all the days of their life. They were and are part of our family. I desperately want to include them in our family. I want to somehow acknowledge their birthdays. I want to celebrate their life.

We’ve tried to have a birthday cake and light a candle with our family on their due dates (what may have been their birthdays), but it’s weird. I’ve tried to say, “I have five children,” but inevitably someone makes a snide, insensitive, or odd comment that makes me wish I hadn’t said anything at all. How do I acknowledge and celebrate the life of my babies?

As a pro-life Christian, I have struggled with this for years. If I am pro-life, then the most obvious way to be for life would be to find human dignity in my own children. My babies, even the ones who only lived in my womb for a matter of weeks, possessed full human dignity by God at the moment of their conception. Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

He created all five of my babies in His image, male and female, at the moment of creation. It doesn’t matter how long their little lives lasted, their lives were created with purpose and worth something. I truly believe that when I don’t talk about them, I am ignoring the fact that God created them in His image for a reason. When I don’t acknowledge their lives as part of our family, as two of our children, I am not acknowledging the dignity that they had as children for 12 weeks and seven weeks of life. How can I, as a mother, disregard my children just because they lived less time on earth than my other children? How can I, as a pro-life Christian, be indifferent to the life and dignity of the humans who were created by our Creator, had all the parts of a real child, had beating hearts, and lived for a time on this earth in the safety of my womb?

I want to be part of changing the conversation that we have with one another. Let’s choose not to be awkward about loss during pregnancy. Let’s choose to embrace each other and celebrate the dignity of each and every little life that God has created in His image for however long they get to live on this earth in our wombs. Let’s tell each other how many children we have with pride and excitement, counting all of the children God has given us to raise on this earth and those we will one day get to meet in heaven.