When there is no heartbeat
a personal update
Prayer for a Heartbeat at the Ultrasound
If there isn’t one,
let the tech tell the truth,
not calmly call the doctor in
while silence claws at my chest.
Be with me.
Hold my fear, thumping frantic
against the window, catch it
gently in your hands.
Be merciful.
Even if I carry death, again,
I was reaching for life
like every made thing.
God, please let this baby live.
Let the heart blink back
at me bewildered on the screen
as distant as my own heart.
If not, when
the doors to that small room
open into the future I dread
help me feel the June sun, help me
see the sky above me as infinite
and generous, even there.
—
This week I experienced my third second-trimester loss—our son Hugo Adoniram, at 17 weeks.
We had never planned to have another baby—we’d been through loss enough times—but he was a surprise; and we hoped (cautiously) that this time, and on this protocol, and with this high-risk doctor, things may go differently.
As with all our losses, we prayed night and day. I wrote this poem about a month ago, when everything still looked wonderful, every ultrasound perfect. I was cautious, and I’m not prone to hope.
What is hard for me is that I don’t doubt God heard me—he heard me, and still said “no” to us raising this little baby. I don’t expect I will have an explanation this side of heaven.
“Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” I came home to the five children God did, somehow, say Yes to, and hugged them and made sure they brushed their teeth and did their projects for VBS.
We did family read aloud and prayed anyway, even when I didn’t feel so much like praying, because that is what faith is. And I want them to see faith, because everyone who lives goes through suffering of some kind or another, some more than others, and I want them to see that God is greater than our suffering, and with us in it.
If you are the praying kind, please keep our family in prayer as we grieve Hugo.