Rock Paper Suburbs

My story of pregnancy loss, and the surprise ending that brought us comfort

By Danni Koko

I lost my baby to miscarriage, and like so many people who bravely walked through this experience before me, I felt suddenly caught in a surreal existence of sadness and grief while the rest of the world seemed to go on as usual around me.  In the wake of my loss, there was pain, there was confusion, and in the end, there was also healing. 

Saying goodbye to a preborn baby is a unique loss that is often gone through in private, and the emotions that follow can be hard to describe.  I believe that’s why so many stories about pregnancy loss go untold.  Now, several years after losing my baby at 20 weeks’ gestation, I feel I am at a place where I can share my story.  For any of you who have to go through life knowing someone else should be there, my heart is with you.  Although it is hard for me to recount the details of my experience knowing how very real and raw they are, my wish is that you will know you are not alone, and my hope is that everyone reading today will find some peace in the unexpected blessings of this story.

On a sunny weekday morning, I was at a routine OB visit.  My one-year-old, our youngest at the time, was sitting in his stroller, my little buddy who often had to come along for appointments and bloodwork, the easygoing third child.  I was lying on the exam table and the doctor listened for a heartbeat, same as he had done at my 16-week appointment.  I was expecting our fourth child, so I had been to these routine appointments many times before.  At 20 weeks pregnant, it should have been easy to hear a heartbeat.  The doctor moved the probe over my stomach.  Then he moved it again.  No sound.  I saw him wrinkle his brow at the silence.

“Let’s see if there’s a heartbeat on the screen,” he suggested. 

We entered another room nearby, and the doctor put an ultrasound transducer on my belly.  I watched as he quietly moved the probe around from side to side.  There was no movement on the screen.  The doctor didn’t say anything, but I could read the look on his face. 

“There’s no heartbeat, is there?” I asked. 

“No,” he responded quietly, “You know, unfortunately, sometimes, these things happen.” 

He gave me a minute and waited in his office for me to come in to talk to him.  He assured me that this wasn’t my fault, and that sometimes these things happen inexplicably.  The reality was just sinking in, so I felt strangely calm.  Everyone in the office looked at me with sad eyes as I pushed my son’s stroller down the hall and out the door of the OBGYN practice.  

Meanwhile, my doctor’s office arranged another ultrasound for that afternoon.  I hadn’t asked for the appointment, although I was grateful to be certain about the fate of my baby. 

I drove home and called my husband who was at work.  No pleasantries were needed on this phone call.  I simply said, “I went to the doctor.  There was no heartbeat.” 

“I’m coming home,” was all he said, and hung up.  I knew he would be on his way immediately.

Over the next couple of hours, I couldn’t even think about what had happened because we had to scramble to find baby-sitting so we could go to the second ultrasound.  It was a weekday, and everyone seemed to be busy with work or with their own families.  Never in my entire motherhood journey did I feel so desperate for childcare for my children.

Finally, I found a neighbor who was free.  Not really free, because she was at a job site, but when she heard the situation she drove home right away.  To this day, I am grateful to her.

My husband and I arrived for the second ultrasound, this time at a different doctor’s office, where the tech cheerfully asked us what we were there for.  When we told her our reason, her face fell.

“I’m going to let you watch the screen,” she said gently, “But I won’t say anything.” 

We understood. 

When an image appeared on the ultrasound screen, we saw our baby lying still, no movement, no flutter of a heartbeat.  Afterwards, the tech left the ultrasound images on a series of monitors so that we could see her notes.  We looked at them for a minute, and then left the office quietly.  Although we aren’t versed in medical vernacular, we could tell what she was trying to tell us.  We had lost the baby.

The days immediately following were busy and stressful.  Because I was advanced in the pregnancy, there was quite a lot that had to happen in the first few days.  Medical needs were preeminent, and I prepared for a D&E.  I knew I would have to carry the baby around in my body for a couple more days, but I couldn’t dwell on that fact. 

We wondered what would happen after the procedure and what would become of our baby.  We learned that in our state, by law a hospital must transfer a preborn baby’s remains to a funeral home if the baby is past a certain gestational age.  We were grateful that this law was in place because there was a clear protocol for us to follow.  We knew we would like to have some kind of a memorial service, but we would need to decide where and how it would happen.

First, though, I had to attend a pre-op appointment where a doctor would explain what would happen during the upcoming D&E and review my medical history before he would, essentially, begin the process of prepping my body for the operation.

It was our first time at this particular practice.  My husband and I sat in two chairs side by side in the unfamiliar office.  The doctor scrolled through the history of my pregnancy on his computer, my baby’s entire existence condensed into a series of medical notes sitting bleakly on the screen of a stranger. 

“Do you want to know what you were having?” the doctor asked.  We said yes.  He turned his eyes away from his computer and directed them towards us.  “You were having a boy,” he said gently.  We nodded.  A boy.

My heart hurt for my one-year-old son.  He would have had a brother.  It was a loss for him that I felt so many times in the following months and years.

As my husband and I sat quietly in those two chairs across from the doctor’s desk, my hands draped over the arms of the office furniture, we must have painted a casual picture to the innocent bystander, but the burden I felt in my mind was overwhelming.  Now that we knew the sex of the baby, the task of giving our baby a name was now in our hands, and with a burial service to plan, naming him seemed to weigh even more heavily on my heart. 

In prior pregnancies, we had always waited to name our children until after they were born, to see what they looked like, to see which name felt right.  I had always believed that God already knew our baby’s names before they born, the same way God already knew everything about them.  But now… How could we name a baby we’d never met?

In those first few days of grieving, my husband and I prayed for our little boy’s name to be revealed to us.  I wanted his name to be revealed to both of us, my husband and me.  I can’t explain exactly why, but in my gut I felt that was how it had to happen.

The morning of the D&E came, and by the time my husband and I got into the car to make the half hour drive to the hospital, I was already in immense pain with contractions.  I had always had fast labors, and it appeared this experience was going to be no different.  We turned on music, trying to stay focused and calm.  You wanna run away, run away and you say that it can’t be so.  Oh my goodness, even the music was trying to rub it in.

When we arrived at the hospital, my contractions were a minute apart.  I didn’t want to panic anyone, so we checked in calmly, and a nurse gave me a hospital gown to change into.  I laid down in the bed I was assigned, trying to maintain my composure as the nursing staff asked me questions.  Everyone on staff who knew why I was there looked at me with sad eyes.  Lying in a long row of beds, thin pastel colored curtains hanging between them, I could hear the sound of the other stretchers being pushed around the room, each one holding a reluctant patient waiting nervously for surgery.  My husband appeared calm but I could see the sadness and worry in his eyes.  The woman next to me cried out in pain.  I prayed for our little boy to reveal his name to us. 

Amidst the hum of the hospital activities, I thought I heard a child’s voice say something, ever so softly. Then I heard it again. 

Confused, I brushed the voice aside.  I thought it must be my imagination.  I was trying to be rational.  There was a lot going on that day, emotionally and physically, and not everything was going as planned.  This baby was coming much faster than the doctors expected.  Surely I was just hearing things. 

I was pulled back to reality as my contractions became more and more intense, and I realized I may not make it into surgery in time.  I had had natural childbirth with my three other children, and I recognized the short time between the contractions, their quickening intensity, and the sleepiness that started to set in between each one.  My body was telling my mind it was going to be time to push.  My husband rushed to call the nurses over.

“If I were in labor, it would be time to push,” I told the nurses. 

“Oh honey, we’ll get you into surgery as quickly as possible,” they replied.  “The doctor is in another surgery now.”  They looked sympathetic, but I felt helpless to change the situation. 

Contraction.  Sleepiness.  Contraction.  Sleepiness.  Contraction.  Oh my goodness, this hurts.  Then… the contractions stopped.  I called the nurses back over. 

“Something came out,” I told them.  I knew what it had to be.

“Oh, it just feels that way,” one nurse tried to say. 

“No,” I replied, “Something came out.” 

The nurses paused, then peeked to see what I was talking about.  They slowly looked up at each other, eyes wide, and stared at each other.  “We’ll go get the doctor,” they said.

When the doctor was able to come over to my bed, she spoke calmly, but I could see the alarm on her face.  She looked under my hospital gown for herself and said slowly, “Ohhh okay.  We’ll get you into surgery as soon as possible.”  I could tell she was trying to be kind.   

Suddenly, there was a rash of activity.  The medical team began hurriedly preparing me for my procedure.  One of the medical staff began reading me a legal document – perhaps she was an anesthesiologist, I can’t remember.  What I do remember is that she started to cry. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I went through something similar to this.” 

“Oh no,” I told her, “You cry all you want!”  In a moment of pain, I was grateful for her empathy.  I saw more sad eyes looking back at me.

When the procedure was over, my husband gently helped me back in the car, and we started to drive away from the hospital.  We were driving away without our baby.  All I could do was cry.

A couple days later, I asked my husband if he knew the baby’s name.  He said he did not know it yet, and I felt discouraged.  Then I thought back to what I might have heard in the hospital.  I didn’t tell my husband about the voice, in part because I couldn’t quite believe it, and in part because I wanted both of us to come to the baby’s name on our own.  I didn’t feel right suggesting a name without him.

Every day that went by felt like a million years. We drove around looking at different locations to lay our baby to rest, anxiously trying to figure out which burial place felt right for our little one.  Meanwhile, we were trying to plan a memorial service – without being able to give the funeral home a name for our baby.

The next day came and went.  I was feeling exhausted and stressed about many of the decisions we had to make. To top it all off, the weather was miserable and it was pouring rain. 

My husband had briefly attended an event at church and had just walked in the door when he received an unexpected text from a friend.  “He said he left something on our front porch,” my husband reported.  We wondered what it could be.  It was an unexpected delivery in the pouring rain.  The object was an unusual size and shape, and it was wrapped in a bag to keep it dry.

My husband, reading the message on his phone, continued casually, “It’s a first class relic… of Saint Gerard.” 

At that moment, I was flooded with emotions.  I jumped.  I shouted.  I put my hands on my husband’s shoulders and exclaimed, “That’s the name.”  He looked at me.  I repeated, “That’s the baby’s name!  Gerard.” 

In the hospital, I had heard a child’s voice.  Amid the chaos and trauma of that day, the voice said, “Gerard. My name is Gerard.” And again, “Gerard. My name is Gerard.”  The tone was quiet but clear.

Despite my human limitations, my hesitation and my doubts, God had reassured us of our baby’s name by bringing it, literally, to our doorstep.

I cried.  Relief flooded over me.  We stared at that relic and were amazed.  For my friends who are unfamiliar with this terminology, a first class relic is a part of a saint’s body, such as a little piece of bone.  The relic is held in a case called a reliquary and it’s considered something special and rare.  Sound crazy?  Believe me, it did feel crazy.  What in the world was this relic doing at our house?  How did it get here?  What I can tell you is that in that moment we felt a tremendous amount of comfort and a profound sense of peace when we desperately needed it.  God had granted us the gift of revealing our baby’s name to us in a way we never would have expected.

The symbolism of our son’s name became immediately clear to us.  If you look up Saint Gerard, you’ll find that he is one of the patron saints of expectant mothers.  Something my husband hadn’t known was that Gerard was also a family name on my side of the family.  Although we had never discussed Gerard as a potential name for any of our children, we were confident that the revelation of our baby’s name was meant to be a source of comfort when we could not create comfort for ourselves.

As it goes with life, we were eager to share our son’s name with everyone we knew, but we also had to keep moving on the practical aspects of our loss.  That meant deciding on a final resting place for him.  We had visited several burial grounds where he could be laid to rest, and there was one cemetery in particular, close to home, that had a peaceful feeling and seemed like it could be the right fit.  For the purposes of this story, I’ll call it “Haley’s Church Cemetery.” 

In our grief, we were pretty sure we would choose the cemetery closest to home, but we were uncertain.  My husband and I had driven around to see many places that day and thought we should take a break by grabbing a coffee before we headed home.  We drove to one restaurant that seemed convenient, but it had closed just moments before we got there.  We went to another restaurant down the road.  It too had just closed.  Why was it so hard to get a cup of coffee?  We landed at a different restaurant, further down the road, and we sat down at a table to place our order.  On the way out, I stood in the lobby waiting for my husband.  I had been in that restaurant many times before, but I must not have ever stood in that exact spot.  I looked up at the wall, and I blinked.  Carved into the side of the wall, on the building’s original cornerstone, was the name “Haley.” 

It was the confirmation we felt we needed.

We did lay our son to rest close to home, and we had a small service with our pastor and our parents at Haley’s Church Cemetery.  The day of the service, I felt like I could barely stand, but I knew people were praying for us and I asked God to sustain us with the prayers of others.  Hearing our pastor say Gerard’s name gave the service a healing touch.  The funeral home gave us prayer cards with Gerard’s name, and sharing the cards with our family and friends over the next several weeks felt like a meaningful way to preserve Gerard’s memory and process our grief.

As time passed, I’d like to tell you that there was a reason discovered for my miscarriage, but the truth is that the doctors were never able to find out what went wrong.  Genetic testing didn’t turn up any answers.  We wanted to believe that God had a plan, but of course, it’s extremely painful to not understand his reasons.  There were many times when I thought, “I can’t believe this is happening.”  In fact, I felt that way every morning when I woke up for a very long time. 

The days and months afterwards were extremely emotional and difficult.  Everyone in our lives knew I had been pregnant, which meant we had to tell everyone about our loss.  Friends.  Neighbors.  School families.  Even my dental hygienist. 

That fall, in the midst of my grief, I saw little butterflies out my window, in my yard, around my neighborhood, on the side of the road, and just about everywhere I went.  Butterflies were ubiquitous even once winter had set in, at a time of year that seemed far too late for butterflies to be outside in my part of the country.  I realized, in seeing butterflies or images of butterflies every day for an entire year, that my son was trying to say that he was still with me – that butterflies were the symbol of his presence, a way of giving me comfort, and I felt hope that I would one day see him again.

It’s taken me a while to share my story, but what I can tell you is that I’ve slowly come to a place of healing.  Had I not walked through the pain, I would not be able to give you that reassurance today.  The wounds are still there, and scars remain, but they are slightly less tender than they used to be. 

A few years later, my husband and l did find peace about growing our family again, this time through adoption.  We learned many things from our adoption journey, and you can read about our experience and the lessons we learned along the way here.  While no one can replace Gerard, we still feel him with us and receive a little comfort every time a tiny butterfly goes past, hopeful that one day we will all be together again.

——

If you’re here today because you’ve experienced miscarriage, still birth, or infant loss, I’d like to take a moment to pause and offer you my heartfelt sympathy for your loss.  I know firsthand that once a child has entered our lives, our hearts are never truly the same, and I hope you will find comfort in talking to someone about your loss and in seeking the support you need. 

While losing my son was an immensely difficult experience, learning his name was a real moment of grace and a true blessing to my family during an otherwise very sad time. We hope you will find comfort in this story as we have, confident that the loved ones we’ve lost are still with us, just on the other side in their heavenly home.  For those of you who are believers, I’m inclined to remember the words of Isaiah, “From within the womb He called me by name” (Isaiah 49:1).