Madeline’s Story

My first pregnancy ended on June 10, 2020. I was 19 weeks and 5 days gestation when my baby girl passed away due to chromosomal defects that made just about all of her organs abnormal and the most important ones fatally so. Needless to say, my husband and I were crushed. I felt a deep emptiness, gloom, and darkness that doesn’t compare, even a little, to anything else I have experienced. I really wondered if I would be okay again.

I recently saw a post on social media about grief. There was a picture of three equally sized jars with one ball in each of them. The jars represent us and the balls represent grief. The ball got smaller with each jar and the caption read something like this: Some people think that grief shrinks with time. Then there was another picture with three jars and a ball in each of them again but this time each ball was the same size, but the jars got bigger and bigger. The caption continues (I’m paraphrasing) : But really, the weight and depth of what happened doesn’t change; our capacity for strength and growth does.

I felt like this was accurate. Overcoming grief doesn’t mean that you are forgetting your child or “moving on with your life” like the grief is getting smaller and smaller. Rather, and with great effort, we can strengthen our emotional endurance, courage, and conviction to be happy anyway. I think that people who can be happy (with time of course, we’re only human) despite awful circumstances are the very image of strength.

For me personally, time and effort have helped me be more accepting of God’s plan for me, even if it involves tragedy. I still know that His plan is still a plan of happiness that can be achieved. I have faith that our loving God wants this for us, even though it didn’t feel like that right away. As time progresses, I’m trying to be happy anyway- be the big jar.

I was fortunate enough to get pregnant about 4 months after my loss. Pregnancy after loss is definitely a bear; a whole different ball game. It’s another girl. I am 35.5 weeks pregnant as I write this and I’m so grateful for every kick and wiggle I feel. Things get better, they always do. There’s love and support all around if you look for it.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” – Wayne W. Dyer