Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month
⚠️ Trigger warning: This post is a personal reflection on miscarriage. Please take care of your heart as you read. If you’re in the middle of this kind of grief, it’s okay to pause or step away. Your story matters, even in silence.
The image attached to this post lived in my “hidden” album on my phone for a long time — alongside the photos of my positive pregnancy tests.
At first, I hid it because I was in shock…(I didn’t tell my husband for a week!) and didn’t want my kids to stumble upon it while playing with my phone. Later, I kept it hidden because the pain of remembering it wasn’t just a bad dream was too much to bear when scrolling through my camera roll.
It’s a simple image: the view from an ER exam bed. I took it that Sunday morning as I sat alone, waiting to confirm what my heart already knew — that the little life I had carried for 9 weeks was gone. It was the last documenting of a pregnancy that had taken us completely by surprise, one we had just begun to celebrate. We had told our kids. We had told our parents. We were only days away from our first ultrasound.
I didn’t take the photo to remember the pain. I took it because I wanted to honor that life — to mark that it existed. Our sweet ones lost too soon are more than a medical moment wrapped in grief. Their lives held purpose and meaning, even if some days it feels like we mamas are the only ones still carrying that truth.
There are some dates your heart never forgets, even when the world keeps moving. They don’t live on your calendar anymore, but they live in you.
This week would’ve been 37 weeks — almost time. And while life looks different than I imagined, I still carry that little life in the quiet corners of my heart.
Back when I would’ve been 30 weeks, I wrote these words. They spilled out one morning when the ache felt sharp and real. I didn’t know then how much I’d still need them now.
30 weeks.
No kicks. No bump. No tiny clothes tucked away just in case. Most days, I move on as if nothing’s missing, but it’s always there – quietly tucked in the background. And when the nudge comes, so does the raging flood of emotions.
This is the side of miscarriage no one prepares you for. Or maybe they do and you just don’t know until you’re here. How you celebrate each friend’s baby announcement with genuine joy and still wonder with sadness if your kids would’ve been little friends. How your heart swells with gratitude for the children sleeping down the hall, yet still wonders who else might have filled the spaces and the chaos.
You feel thankful when others are gentle, when they remember without prompting. But there’s also anger that gentleness is even needed at all. And you long for your kids to remember too – this brother or sister that they’ll only meet in Heaven – to quietly mark these weeks with you, yet you protect their hearts from reminding them of a sadness they can’t fix.
I’ve realized that miscarriage is holding two things at once: grief and gratitude, sadness and joy, loss and hope. It is a constant reminder of something you can’t see, can’t hold, but still carry. Sometimes it’s louder, sometimes it’s soft, but it’s a constant learning to live with both hands full and empty at the same time.
There’s a verse that has met me again and again through this journey:
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18
I believe that with my whole heart — that God draws near to us in our heartbreak, not away. That He doesn’t rush us through the pain but sits beside us in it.
And I hold tightly to this truth:
“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb… Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
— Psalm 139:13,16
Before my body held a miracle, God held them first. He knew them, loved them, and had already written their story into eternity.
There is comfort in knowing that Heaven is not a faraway place — it’s the promise that love doesn’t end here. The sorrow of this world will one day be swallowed by joy that never fades. Praise the Lord!
“Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” — Psalm 126:5
“You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy.” — John 16:20
Even in the ache, there’s a deep, quiet hope. One day, joy will outshine sorrow, and every tear will be accounted for and redeemed. Until then, I trust that the same God who knit my baby together is still knitting beauty from the broken pieces of my heart.
Some stories don’t have tidy endings—they just become part of who you are. If you’ve walked this road too, please know you’re not alone. Your love, your loss, and your remembering all matter deeply.
If you’ve experienced pregnancy or infant loss, October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. At 7:00pm (in every time zone), families around the world light candles to create a wave of light in honor of the babies who are loved and remembered forever. 🕯️
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