One of the hardest things about a miscarriage is the silence.
Our worldly society doesn’t have ways to mark the passing of a baby before birth. There typically isn’t a funeral. There is no obituary. There are no ceremonies.
It’s often just silence.
Yes, of course, you will have your husband with you. And your family and close friends who will be there to support you. That is … if you’ve even told them that you are pregnant. It is sometimes simply too hard to make the first announcement of your pregnancy be also the announcement of the loss of your baby.
So, often mothers simply move on. Or they are expected to get back to normal as quickly as possible.
But there is more to the story of the little life you’ve carried.
Jellybean: A Baby’s Journey to God by Theoni and Bastian Bell is a new book for children about a family’s relationship to a baby lost to stillbirth. But it is more than a children’s book. It is also a book for a mother’s heart.
From a family’s joy at the coming of a new baby to the realization that the baby had died, this book addresses some of the things that might be left unspoken.
But more than that, it reminds us that a child lost to miscarriage or stillbirth can intercede for us. Children who pass away before the age of reason are a family’s personal saint in heaven. These children can hear our prayers and intercede for us.
In this story, as the baby passes from life in the womb to everlasting life, she is reminded:
“You can hear them still. You can ask the Lord face-to-face to give them His grace, and He will.”
Reading this made me pause.
I had four miscarriages in the midst of birthing six babies. 10 children total, but only 6 still with me.
It has been many years since my last miscarriage, and I now don’t often think of them. When I do, it is most often because someone I know reveals that she is going through the same thing. It is in those moments that feelings flood back.
How easy it is to forget. But in that forgetting, we are giving something up. The little baby who we carried, even for a short while, is in the presence of God. Perhaps we don’t know exactly how that manifests in the reality of eternal life. But it is a comfort to contemplate how our baby can intercede for us.
It is also true that is not just the mother who grieves the loss of a baby before birth. This story acknowledges that losing a baby touches everyone in the family. And it inspires hope that this young family member is waiting for the rest of the family to join her in heaven.
There is sadly little to support children who have lost a sibling before birth in a way that honors the eternal life of the baby. Some think it best to hide the loss from them or to act as if everything is fine so we don’t worry them or scare them. But this story moves in a different way. By reading this with your children, you can help them understand and give them hope that they will meet their sibling some day.
