Today is December 18, 2018. Ten years ago today, we were enduring our second miscarriage. I have thought a lot about this day over the past week and debated many times whether to write about it, always finding an excuse not too…not enough time, nobody wants to read about that, is there really enough to say about it…the excuses kept coming.

Then I popped on Facebook tonight and saw this…

So maybe I should write about what was happening to us ten years ago.

We were on top of the world. We had the most precious 18 month old boy and had just found out on December 11, that we were expecting another baby. We were beyond excited, but also nervous. I had always wanted my first two children to be close together in age, but had already experienced one miscarriage. It was the holidays, what a perfect time to celebrate a new life, but we were nervous to share our news. We decided to tell our immediate family, but otherwise, wanted to keep the news quiet until the end of the first trimester.

After a few days, we decided to tell some close friends and spiritual mentors the good news so they could pray for us. The next morning, on December 18, 2008, we had to call these same people to ask if they could come over and stay with our son while we went to the doctor, as I woke up experiencing signs of a miscarriage. At only 5 or 6 weeks gestation, our baby was gone. Exactly one week after hearing the good news and exactly one week before Christmas, we were crushed.

For our own reasons, we decided not to share the news with anybody else that didn’t already know. This included other family and pretty much all of our friends. It’s only because of the joy in our 18 month old’s eyes that we made it through that Christmas.

With a due date of August 2009, this baby would be nine years old now. This was our third pregnancy.

Our first pregnancy also ended in a miscarriage. This happened in May of 2006. This baby had a due date of December 15, 2006, and would just be turning 12.

I’m sure the due date of one baby being December 15, and the date we lost another being December 18, plays into why this has been on my mind lately. Some years it’s more prominent than others. It wasn’t until we lost Kyleigh that we shared the details of our second miscarriage with other people. Everyone handles each loss so differently, and that’s okay. We had reservations about telling others about our second miscarriage when it occurred because of the way some people treated us after our first loss. We didn’t want to go through that again, so we kept the pain to ourselves.

So much of what we talk about and do through Kyleigh’s Gift bears Kyleigh’s name, but for us, it’s about ALL babies who have left this life too soon, at any gestational age. We continue to provide miscarriage care packages for women at Liberty Hospital and hope that this gesture provides even the smallest bit of comfort. We also hope that by receiving the care package, these women know that their baby matters, for we know that they will always know how old this child would be now.

Miscarriage Care Package