Flynn

10 years ago, I packed my hospital bag. The usual baby bag: a change of clothes, a crossword, my bible, and a little baby blanky.

But I wasn’t bringing a car seat or a cute “going home” outfit. I was going to the hospital, and they were going to induce me. I would be in labour for hours, refusing pain meds, and my baby would be dead when I had him.

4 days before, at our routine 21 week ultrasound, they told us his heart had stopped beating. Time stopped. The walls closed in as I sat in that cold, dark room trying to process what she just said. I was certain I felt the baby kick the day before. But they told me he had been gone longer than that. How did I not know? What was wrong with my maternal instinct?

Monday, April 4, 2011, Josh and I drove to the hospital and checked in. I cried. So many tears. This couldn’t be happening to me. This only happened to the strongest of women. To the women that God deemed able to handle this sort of pain, Not me!

And yet, somehow I did it.

I birthed that tiny little boy, and I held him. We held him. My lungs betrayed me with every breath I took. I remember begging God to just take me. I told Him I couldn’t do this. I told Him I couldn’t live the rest of my life with this pain and this yearning to get to know my child.

But I am still here.

We stayed in the hospital for a couple hours. Our family came to be with us and we cried with them. We named him, we talked about who he looked like. Did you know that an 18 week old baby already starts to resemble his family?

Eventually I laid little Flynn on the hospital bed, wrapped in his little blanky and I left. I left my baby there and went home. Knowing I would never get to hold him or smell him again. I felt like I was committing the ultimate betrayal leaving him there.

And I, along with thousands of other women out there who have experienced this kind of loss are silenced. We are silenced by people who call unborn babies “tissue”. We are silenced by movements that scream it’s a women’s “right” to choose to end their children’s lives before they’re born. We are silenced by people who have never experienced the suffering that comes with losing a baby, and don’t take the time to think about what it must feel like.

So my prayer today is that Jesus will keep taking the pain away little by little, and that one day, people will understand that just because the grief of losing a baby isn’t the same as losing a 5 year old, or a 20 year old child, it’s still grief. It’s not supposed to look the same on everyone. So be gracious to others in this life.

Jesus died and rose again for the small babies too, and I am so grateful for the promise of holding my boy again one day. Happy 10th Birthday in Heaven, my Flynn. 💙

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