On the Trail of an 18-Month-Old

The birds are chirping, the coffee pot is gurgling, and my 3 oldest children are coloring and giggling quietly at the table.  Sigh.  Peace and tranquility. (imagine soft violin music playing in the background to complete the picture).  Gurgle gurgle, Chirp chirp, giggle giggle, FLUSH.  Huh?  The violin music screeches to a stop on a discordant note.  The birds scatter and fly away.  The coloring and giggling pauses.  FLUSH.  ZOOM! Who left the bathroom door open!! All of a sudden I am transported to reality and uber-focused.  I am on the trail of an 18-month-old, who from the sounds of it, broke into the bathroom to wreak havoc.  I imagine myself in khaki shorts, with a khaki photo vest, socks pulled up to my knees, binoculars around my neck, jungle-safari hat on my head.  Yes, sir, I am hot on the trail...

I approach the bathroom with trepidation.  There is the unmistakable sound of water running, and from the sounds of it, its coming from the sink and the bathtub.  I hear the sound of water being dumped and then another flush.  As I peak around the corner and into the bathroom, I see him.  There he is, all 2 and 1/2 feet of him.  A little pint-sized tornado.  Or in this case, hurricane - as water is splashed everywhere and overflowing out of the toilet.

Noah!!!!  (the irony of his name strikes me as my voice gets shrill...the first famous Noah had his own flood to deal with, and now mine seems to be trying to recreate the experience of his namesake in my bathroom).  He turns form the toilet and looks at me with his big gap-toothed grin.  "Bath!" He says happily.  "No bath!" I respond, "you don't take a bath in the potty!"  "Potty!" he parodies back at me and reaches for the handle to flush it again.  "No no!" I say sternly, as I slip-slide across the floor to grab my little pint-sized-perp.  I scoop him up, soaking my shirt as he gives me a soggy hug. "No no!" he tells himself and gives his hand a little whack.  Then he laughs and tries to smoosh my face with hands.  They.  Smell.  Awful.

I have given up on washing his hands.  I have resorted to cleaning his hands off with the Clorox Disinfectant Wipes - especially when he has been doing anything bathroom related.   I know, I know, it can't be good for his skin.  In my defense, he is the 4th child.  He is also the grossest.  I can guarantee you that whatever he has been into that requirers a Clorox Wipe is far worse for him than the heavy duty cleaning agents needed to clean off the grossness.  Still, since I try to not use many chemicals in the house (really Clorox wipes and Lysol are my only caveats)  I try to limit the clorox hand wiping...anyway I decide that this situation calls for one such wipe.  After he has been adequately disinfected I put him down and turn to tackle the bathroom.

I decide that this requires rubber boots and rubber gloves.  Cleaning up the amazingly disgusting and very soggy mess takes a bit of time, but when I deposited Noah in the kitchen with the other kids he happily tottered over to the table to observe the coloring.  I figured I had a few minutes to clean the only bathroom in the house, since its somewhat of a necessity to have it available for use (if we had more than one bathroom I would have totally locked the door and awaited my dear husband's arrival home before shamelessly flirting with him until he gallantly offered to clean it for me. Oh well.)  After cleaning I surveyed the newly disinfected and washed down bathroom.  Subconsciously patting myself on my back I decided to change my soggy clothes.  Wait a second...what is that sound?  It sounds like sand running through a sieve....oh no!  Noah!!!  Once again, I am hot on the trail of an 18 month old.

I follow the sound into the kitchen.  I glance hopefully at the kitchen table - 3 coloring children, no Noah.  I glance across the kitchen to the cabinets.  There he is.  I take a step closer, not really wanting to discover what is making the sound because its obviously coming from the little guy's direction.  Hmm...what is he sitting in.....I hear the sieve-like sound again and realize that its not sand being sifted, its sugar being dumped into my colander, and then being sifted through the holes onto the floor.  My happy little flood maker has turned into a prospector, mimicking the gold prospectors of the the west while using my 10 lb bag of sugar and my spaghetti colander.  How ingenious of him.  How sweet (literally) how completely messy!  He was sitting happily in a pile of sugar.  I clear my throat and he glances up at me, smiles wickedly, and lays down in the pile of sugar, opens his mouth and licks as much as can.  Noah!!!  He pops up and tries to outrun me, trailing sugar everywhere.  Noah, stop!  I plead.  He just smiles and tries to double his little 18 month old speed.  Now there is sugar in my living room, down my hallway, and in his bedroom.  Sigh.  Looks like vacuuming is in my very near future.

I manage to intercept my sugary little speed demon and haul him into the bathroom.  BATH!! He gleefully yells at me, grabbing my face with his grainy hands.  Yes, I answer, you managed to score a bath afterall.  It occurs to me that maybe this was his plan all along.  I deposit him in the tub and he turns on the water.  He is very adept at that.  I remove his clothes - still soggy from his previous bathroom escapades - and now covered in sugar.  Its amazing how well sugar sticks to wet clothing.  I glance down at my own still-soggy clothes.  Yep, it sticks very well.

Soon Noah is cleaned off, and I manage to at least change into dry, non-granulated clothing.  OK.  time to vacuum.  Its amazing how 10 lbs of sugar can quickly fill up a bagless Dyson.   I manage to suck up most of the sugar before it can be trailed anywhere else.  While I am vacuuming I become aware of the fact that Noah has ceased to be entertained by the vacuum and is now apparently on the prowl somewhere else.  I quickly put the vacuum away and strain my ears.  No unusual sounds.  Maybe he is reading, I think to myself optimistically.  I walk into the kitchen (which is also our homeschool classroom) and see that the coloring has been abandoned by the older children.  Of course they neglected to clean up the crayons and markers...markers???? Where did they get markers?? and why are there several marker tops scattered on the floor??  And is that a glue stick?! Then I hear it, a little voice humming.  And, once again, I am on the trail.

I look under the table and see him.  Covered in green and brown marker sort of like he was trying to turn himself into Swamp Thing.   As I observed the scene underneath the table I noticed that my miniature Swamp Thing was concentrating very hard on smearing something on his lips (well, at least the general region of his lips).  What is that?  Oh.  Its a glue stick.  He thinks its Chapstick - and he smearing it all over the lower part of his face.  Sigh.  I check on the older kids, who are playing happily outside, and then grab my sticky Swamp Thing.  After a quick assessment of his situation I decide that this mess doesn't require a Clorox Wipe, just a lot of warm water.   After using enough to remove the stickiness and the most obvious marker tattoos, I turn him loose once again so I can make lunch.

Making lunch was slightly less uneventful, as he only felt the need to empty the pots and pans from the oven drawer, scatter my tupperware around the kitchen and pull out all the tuna fish cans from the cabinet and hide them in obscure places around the house.  At least this particular bout of destruction didn't require a bath, vacuuming, or Clorox Wipes!

After lunch I got a bit of a reprieve as the 18-month-old whirling dervish took his nap and I was able to do some school work with his siblings.  It seemed all too soon though that as I was explaining that "Lessing" is actually called "Subtracting" I heard the sounds of a one-baby-destruction-unit waking up.  "MAMA!!!!!! OUT!!!!!!!!"  Apparently he wants to get out of his crib.

After freeing him from the confines of the only apparatus that will keep him in one place I attempt to finish schooling the oldest two of my children.  I grab some toys and books and try to interest Noah in playing or reading.  For a while he takes the bait and I manage to read him a book while giving his brother a spelling test and explaining the proper use of "a" and "an" to his sister.

Soon, though, reading became boring and I had to release him to wreak havoc somewhere else.  This of course was soon accomplished.  As we were cleaning up from school I heard the unmistakable sound of baby giggling.  Hmmm.  That kind of giggling usually spells trouble.  Time to follow the trail of my 18-month-old.  I follow his happy sounds down the hallway.  I stand, senses alert, listening.  There it is again, and what is that softer, muffled sound?  Sort of like the sound a sponge makes when you wring it out...a BIG sponge.

I determine that the 18-month-old I am tracking has barricaded himself in the bedroom of his oldest 2 siblings.  I break through the barricade (OK not really, he had just closed the door, but it sounded more adventurous) and I find him on the top bunk of the bunk-bed running back and forth giggling.  But what was that squishing sound?  Upon closer inspection I discover that the squishing sound is actually the mattress - and it appears that a large amount of water has been dumped on it.  The sopping wet shirt that my son is now sporting leads me to believe that he is responsible for the dumping.  "Bath!"  he gleefully yells at me.  "Did you give yourself a bath?"  I ask.  "Uh-huh!"  he responds.  I decide to try to not concentrate on being annoyed that my oldest son's bed is now a giant sponge, and instead focus on how proud I should be that my 18 month old has mastered enough communication skills to forgo the appropriate verbal response of "yes" and instead employ the use of vernacular slang by saying "uh-huh" with the correct intonation.

I grab the little squirm and decide its time for a distraction.  "Who wants to dance!?"  I ask.  A chorus of "me me me" follows and even the little guy announces "MEH MEH"  (its as close as he can get to saying it).  So I put on some of their favorites songs.  We are all being silly and dancing around the living room when I notice that my 3 year old is missing.  All of a sudden he proudly appears, bottomless.  "I did it!" he screeches.  This announcement usually means that he has successfully used his little training potty.   I give him a big hug and two skittles as a reward.  It is then that I realize that my dancing destructo has once again gone missing.  I look at the 3 year old, "Did you remember to dump your potty?"  "Ummmmm" was the only answer I got before I took off on a sprint, hot on the trail of my 18-month-old who, instinct screamed at me, was at this very moment fishing in the training potty.  Darn!  I hate it when my instinct is right.

There he was, elbow deep in the plastic training potty that looks like a dog.  Fishing.  "Noah!"  I yell.  He looks at me.  "Potty."  he says very seriously.  "Yes I know, but we don't play in this potty either."  I run over and remove him from the nastiness.  Thankfully its just number one.  "Urine is sterile I try to calmly remind myself."  (its slightly disturbing to me how this has become somewhat of a personal mantra).  I dump the offending fluid and then head to the sink to clean off my adventuresome fisherman.

That done we finish our dance party with my still pantless 3 year old really breaking out the moves.  This must have inspired his younger brother because faster that I would have thought possible my 18 month old had stripped down and successfully removed his diaper, and was now parading proudly around the living room while "Dancing Queen" blared in the background.  He was really strutting his stuff - in all his chubby cuteness.  I decided that they could at least finish the playlist, then we'd re-clothe the youngest two boys.  Bad move, Mommy.

About half-way through the next song my cute little streaker disappeared into the toy room.  I figured he'd reappear shortly since he liked the song that was playing.  It was then that a somewhat offensive odor wafted in from the toy room.  Oh no.  "Noah?"  I called, hoping that my nose was confused.   He toddled around the corner.  "Potty.  Bath."  He announced.  I squeezed my eyes shut. "Why do you need a bath?"  "Uh-oh.  Potty."  he declared showing me his foot, which was smeared with a suspicious brown substance.  "Ohhhhh." I groaned.  "You went potty?"  I asked, already knowing the answer.  He nodded very emphatically then pointed to the cabinet where the skittles are kept.  "This."  he said.  He went potty, now he wanted a reward.  "No, Noah.  You're getting a bath - again."  Not even Clorox wipes would do this justice - he needed the full force of the bathtub and the spray nozzle.   He seemed thrilled to be in the bathtub yet again.

After cleaning and disinfecting my little toy-room-defecator I tackled that smelly mess he left behind - which covered three full room since he managed to trail his yuckiness into the kitchen and living room.  THAT required Clorox Wipes.  Eventually that chore was complete and I realized that it was approaching dinner.  As I headed into the kitchen I discovered that while I was cleaning the latest mess Noah was hard at work making another.  This one involved dried pasta.  There it was all over the floor.  There he sat, calmly sorting it into my measuring cups and then re-dumping.  Since he was so content sitting amidst his latest mess I decided to ignore it for the time being and make dinner.

After dinner the older 3 did their 'after dinner chores' helping me clean the kitchen while I vacuumed yet again.  I could be a Dyson infomercial.   Once the vacuuming was done it was time for the kiddos to get ready for bed.  But the day wouldn't be complete without having to track down the trail of my 18-month-old one more time.  As the older ones were brushing their teeth and washing their faces I became aware of the fact that the youngest male of the family had vacated the bathroom and gone missing.  This spelled trouble.  I mentally put on my safari hat, once more.  I had tracking to do.

As I glanced at the floor I noticed a strange smudge on it.  I got down on my knee to take a closer look.  It smelled minty.  Toothpaste.  And just like that, I had my trail.  I followed random minty smudges down the hall and into the bedroom that  my two youngest boys share.  There he was.  A pint-sized  dental hygienist squirting toothpaste into his bed.  "Noah!"  I said, proud of myself for sounding calm and in control.  "No toothpaste!"  "Tooth!"  he looked at me and demonstrated his tube squeezing prowess.  He seemed proud.  "You're very strong" I said, but we don't squeeze toothpaste into our beds."  I patiently explained, silently wondering why I was bothering to explain this to the same kid who needed two separate baths today alone.

I scooped him up, wrestled the toothpaste away from him, and set about cleaning up the minty freshness in his bed.   I got lucky that he was so mad at me taking away the toothpaste that he through a tantrum which kept him writhing on the floor screaming while I cleaned his bed.  At least I knew where he was!

Eventually all was clean, albeit mint-fragranced.  I gathered the little man into my arms.  "Time for night-night," I told him, myself weary from a day of tracking this little dust devil of a child.  He stuck his fingers in his mouth put his arm around my neck, and snuggled on my shoulder.  Just like that the day's escapades melted away.  I was snuggling with my growing-up-too-fast baby boy.  I forgot about the messes, the vacuuming, the multiple baths, and the Clorox Wipes.  I smelled his extremely clean head and nuzzled his chubby cheek.  Moments like this make donning my mental safari hat worth it.

When my husband came home from his night class I was sitting calmly on the couch reading.  The house was clean, (and very vacuumed).  The kitchen was in order, and the children were all tucked in.
"How was your day?"  my husband asked me.

" Have you ever been on a safari?" I responded.

"Huh?  What?" he looked at me quizzically.

"Oh, nothing," I responded, "It was pretty normal."  I smiled to myself.

"Wow, the rug looks like you just vacuumed...the kids must have been good today if you got extra cleaning done."

If he only knew...

Pro-Life?

This theme has been cropping up since we first heard the devastating news from the ultrasound technician,  "The baby's heart isn't beating."  At that moment I would have traded my own heart if it meant my baby's might begin to beat again.  But that was not God's Will.  As the tears rolled down my face I couldn't help but think that in that very same hospital there might be a woman equally as scared and uncertain as I was at that moment, but her baby's heart WAS beating - and she was about to ask the doctors to make it stop.  This diabolical dichotomy plays out every day in hospitals all over this country.  Women learn that the children they longed to hold won't be born, or if they are born, they are still - the life already gone from their perfect little bodies.  At the same time there are women who are waiting to rid themselves of what this society has termed 'a problem.'  Women who are scared, who don't know or wont admit the Truth about the life they carry - and are about to destroy.  This duality has reaches that go beyond the  political issue of abortion.  

As I waited for my baby's body to be born I went to work gathering information and making arrangements so that we could have a proper burial for our daughter.  As  I went about this task I made some startling and dismaying discoveries.  

I learned just how fortunate I was to have a hospital that would honor our request to bury our daughter by releasing her remains to a funeral home.  I also learned how incredibly fortunate I was to have contacted a compassionate funeral director who would do whatever he had to in order to obtain the very important Certificate of Fetal Death (also known as Certificate of Fetal Demise).  

You see, in most states, unless you are at a private hospital (and even then it might not matter), babies still-born under 20 weeks of gestation, or any fetal remains of a miscarriage or D & C must be treated as medical waste.  Yes thats right, if I had been in some other hospital when I delivered Claire's beautiful, intact body, she would have been discarded as medical waste.  In many places it is next to impossible for parents to obtain the remains of their babies or have them released to a funeral home for a proper burial.  Since Life Insurance Policies do not cover Miscarried or Stillborn children the costs of a funeral and all the necessities are often too high for a family who wasn't expecting to have to bury a baby.  (Granted, there are Churches like mine who have Cemeteries and who offer discounts for situations like ours.  Likewise, the Funeral Home offered its services free of charge, and only asked that we pay for the Vaulted Coffin - which is required by law - and the headstone.)   This leaves women the option of miscarrying at home, which is often what happens before 12 weeks anyway, but in cases like mine there are greater risks of complications.  Actually two different people - one a physician, and another a nurse - remarked that I risked my life by waiting to deliver my baby!  

Claire was around 14 weeks old when her heart stopped beating.  I was over 18 weeks when I finally checked into the hospital to be induced.   Why did I wait?  The advice I got at the first ER visit was to have a D & C (Dilation and Curettage - which usually ends up being a Dilation and Suction).  The doctor warned me of some of the risks of waiting 'too long' -  the risk of infection and hemorrhaging (which I have a history of when it comes to delivering full term babies).   Then I saw the ultrasound picture.  There was my baby.  She was perfect.  Her body was perfectly formed and totally intact.  (Sometimes the body begins to break down.)  In my heart I knew there was no way I could do a D & C.  I had absolutely no peace with that idea.  I saw my daughter.  She deserved to be treated with dignity.  I've read the Theology of the Body too many times to be able to delude myself into thinking that our bodies don't mean anything.  She was made in the Image and Likeness of God and I would do everything I could to treat her body with the respect she, as a child of God, deserved.  The ER doctor told me I could try to wait it out and prescribed some uber-pain killers if I went that route.  Just getting handed a prescription paper for Vicodin and Percocet made me shudder.  This was going to hurt.

Two days later I ended up back in the ER because I felt like I was in labor and I had other 'symptoms' on the "Come Back to the ER If..." list they had given me the first time I had been there.  I sat in the waiting room for 5 hours - all the while my labor like pains were intensifying.  By the time I was taken into an exam room I couldn't talk through contractions and I felt just like I did every other time I'd given birth - intense pain that made me pretty much wish for death.    The nurse tried to help as best she could.  She was just out of nursing school and had no children of her own.  She looked at me mid-contraction (they were 2-3 minutes apart lasting 90+ seconds, and were of course, in my back.  Back labor is a specialty of mine...)  "So how bad are your cramps?"  I tried to stay relaxed and whispered, its not a cramp.  Its back labor.  Breathe, I reminded myself.  "Ok, um.." she tried again, "so on the pain scale would you say you're at a 5 yet?"  That actually got me to open my eyes.  I looked at her and tried my best to not cop an attitude.  No, I answered, I'd say I'm at about a 12.  "Oh.  And where exactly do you feel the cramping?"  I exhaled as another one geared up.  I do not feel cramping, I tried to explain.  I feel like 2 giant knives are being stabbed into my lower back and slowly dragged around my sides towards my belly button.  Then the knives get mashed around my abdomen, and down towards my legs.  "Oh" she said with wide eyes, "Is that what back labor feels like?"  I tried not to look like I felt at that moment - like a giant science experiment.  It does for me, I answered.  "Well," she said uncertainly, 'the doctor will be in soon."   Half an hour later the doctor waltzed in.  "You're not in labor. You're cramping.  You only go into labor with real babies."  Thankfully for him I was in the middle of a particularly painful contraction, otherwise I think I would have kicked him.  That was when the chills and nausea started.  I secretly hoped that I WOULD puke and in my mind, I aimed it right at him.  How dare he say that my baby wasn't real!  "My baby is real!" I hissed.  "She isn't alive anymore, but that doesnt make her any less real or less loved."  He scribbled away on his notepad and ordered some kind of medication be given to me.  He said once the meds kicked in he'd do an exam.  Well, those meds, whatever they were, made me higher than a kite, and they also stopped the contractions.  His exam proved disappointing to him, because he "couldn't easily grab anything out."  Boy did THAT comment make me want to run for the hills!  He eventually handed me a cup and baggie.  "I'm sure this will all be over by tomorrow.  Just catch as much as you can and put anything resembling a fetus in the cup.  Make sure the lids on tight and bring it back after you're done."  He tried to insist one more time that "it wasn't a real baby." Lucky for him I was still a little loopy from the drugs.

We headed home dazed and infuriated.  I knew one thing for sure, there was no way I'd put my baby in a cup and no way I'd ever give the body of my baby to that man.  So we hunkered down at home, scared out of our wits because of my history of bleeding too much.  I found a beautiful wooden box and took out my wedding handkerchief.  Along with those items I placed a bottle of Holy Water and Holy Oil.  Then it was time to pray and wait.  "Baby Claire," I would pray, "just let me be able to honor your body and bury you.  Show me what God's Will is in all this, and what I should do."  

During the next week we waited and prayed.  I worked with the Funeral Home and they talked me through some of the finer points of my situation.  I spent hours upon hours on the phone with various departments of the hospital trying to obtain a Certificate of Fetal Death so I wouldn't have to go back or bring Claire's body into the hospital to be "officially declared dead."  After two days of maddeningly fruitless phone calls - no one seemed to know what to tell me or who I should talk to, I called the Funeral Home in tears, terrified I wouldn't be able to bury my baby after all.  The extremely kind gentleman assured me to not worry and said that he would take care of obtaining the all-important certificate. What a blessing to have that weight off my shoulders.  That was when I learned that it is actually Abortion Law that makes it illegal in so many places to obtain the remains of a miscarried or still-born baby under 20 weeks for burial.  The Abortion Laws have decided that under 20 weeks, a baby isn't a "real baby."  The Abortion Laws make it necessary for a Funeral Home to file a Certificate of Fetal Death if you want to bury your child in a Cemetery, and they are hard to get if the baby is less than  20 weeks.  The sheer lunacy of these 'laws' made my head spin.  I was terrified that I would have to fight to be able to bury my baby, or worse yet, not be able to.  I was even more scared of experiencing complications at home.  

I was stuck in an extremely uncomfortable, crampy, latent labor-like state and was beginning to get concerned about infection and sepsis (of which I only later learned I was at extreme risk).  I finally made an appointment with the OB listed on the ER discharge papers.  He was the first medical professional who actually listened to me long enough to understand my situation, my concerns, and my desires.  He did his own exams and ultrasound and pretty much discounted what both ER docs had said.  He immediately recommended an induction.  Thank God for this man who worked out the details and got me on the hospital schedule.  

That was how I ended up in Labor and Delivery holding my tiny baby after 7 hours of labor.  The Funeral Director came personally to the L & D floor and I was able to give my baby, baptized and anointed, wrapped in the handkerchief and laid in the wooden box to the extremely compassionate nurse, who in turn gave her directly to the Funeral Director.  At that moment, I felt more peace than I had in weeks.  A few days later we had a burial service for our daughter Claire.  A small group of family and friends gathered at the cemetery and our Priest celebrated the Rite of Christian Burial for our dear little baby.  As we drove home, I felt extremely sad, but I had an even deeper inner peace.  

Now that I've had a few weeks to digest and ponder all that has happened I can't shake the idea that some of the frustrations I encountered are because our society, and most notably the medical community is not encouraged to be Pro-Life.  I actually had a doctor tell me that I wasn't carrying a "real baby!"  I mean, how can you even say that, unless you have skewed understanding of what Life is?  

I think what makes me furious is that my story is far from unique.  I've had a couple of people tell me I am brave for "risking my life" so that I could bury my baby.  It sounds like I should feel like some sort of hero.  I mean heroes risk their lives, me?  I'm just a mother who desperately wanted to do right by her child.  I felt like the only thing I could do for her was bury her.  I'm no hero, I'm not brave.  I'm furious! If I had been 14 weeks pregnant and walked into a Planned Parenthood Office asking for an Abortion would I have been treated the way I was in the ER?   Would I have been given the brush off?  No.  I would have been swept into an office and "cared for."  (At least thats the way they try to make the women who come into their offices feel.)  

What if I had been in labor with a full term, healthy baby?  Would I have been forced to wait in a waiting room for 5 hours?  Would nurses have tried to convince me that I wasn't in labor?  Would my baby have been dismissed as being "not real?"  Of course not!  

What if I had delivered an extremely premature baby?  Wouldn't the doctors have done everything they could to save him or her?  Wouldn't that baby be given special care until he or she was healthy and strong?  Would any doctor say that a tiny prematurely born baby, fighting for life wasn't a "real baby?"  No way!  

Why then, did I have the experience that I did?  Why do women all across our country have similar, or worse experiences, when all they want is medical care during a scary, uncertain, extremely sad time.  Why are their babies dismissed and discarded as "medical waste?"  Why is it so hard for parents to simply bury their children?  

We need to be more Pro-Life, and truly Pro-Woman.  The biggest deception that the pro-aborts have forced upon us is that they truly care about women.  Women have a "right to choose" they like to tout.  They like to float these phrases "women deserve access to quality medical care."  Yeah that sounds reasonable, but all they really mean is "access to abortion."  When it comes to truly receiving medical care - do you think we get it?  You know what?  WE DON'T.   We don't have the "right to choose" to bury our babies if they die in the womb before 20 weeks.  Women often do not have the right to quality medical care and supervision during a miscarriage - not if they want to be able to bury their child or their child's remains.  Do you call being dismissed and handed a cup "quality medical care?"  I was appalled to learn just how at risk I was of some severe and life-threatening complications.  Is that quality  care?  How is forcing women to choose between receiving medical care and being able to bury their babies an advancement for women?  How is that protecting a woman's right to choose?  Why can't women choose to receive quality care AND be able to bury the remains of their babies?  

It is a Pro-Life Issue, because it is abortion that has muddied the waters of medicine.  Abortion, which is supposed to be so freeing and liberating to women, is tying the hands of the women who just want to honor the babies that they will never hold.  

Its abortion that has perpetrated this fraud upon us - telling us that if your baby dies in the womb "Its not a real baby."  How else could abortion survive?  The minute the medical community admits that "its a real baby" at conception, abortions' days are numbered.  When the medical community finally gets its act together and treats all babies with respect - born, pre-born, still-born, or deceased in the womb - abortion is finished.  

This is perhaps an untapped portion of the Fight to be Pro-Life.  We (and rightly so) concentrate so much on abortion that we,  as a Pro-Life people, often overlook the smaller battles of the same war.  Until I lived through the nightmare of losing a baby I had no idea that women and parents all over the country were silently suffering because they were denied the right they have as parents to properly mourn and bury and their children.  In a country that likes to brag about how tolerant and accepting it is, this is a travesty that simply cannot be excused, because to put it one way, parents who lost a baby in the womb are discriminated against.  They have no rights.  In this "great and progressive country of ours" you have the right to murder your child.  But not to bury your child.  

Yes my friends, its about being Pro-Life.  Perhaps as a Pro-Life people we should seek to correct this egregious wrong.  In doing so we will be advancing the Pro-Life cause, securing the right of parents to bury their babies' remains, regardless of gestational age, and therefore witnessing to the fact that the babies themselves have a Right to Life, and should they be taken to Our Heavenly Father because it is His doing, they also have the right to be buried - to be treated as the beautiful tiny persons that they are.  

 

Open to Life

This phrase gets bandied around quite a bit by Catholics who are trying to explain that they aren't contracepting, and who truly believe that God gets the final say on their family size. Generally these Catholics, like my husband and I, believe what the Church teaches about the great responsibility that comes with our gift of fertility, and that it takes a concerted and prayer-filled effort between both the spouses and God to come to an understanding of what His Will is for one's family.  

My husband and I were married at age 21 and felt led to not wait to begin growing our family.  We both were eager to experience this "openness to life" that we had talked about during our rather long engagement.   Four children and 6 years later we learned that openness to life means occasionally being surprised by the generosity of Our Heavenly Father!  Now its been 7 years, and 5 pregnancies and I am just fully grasping and internalizing the REST of what being Open to Life means.  

Claire's death taught me that when we are "Open to Life" we must be entirely open to God's Will for that Life.  That Life is His.  He gives us the tremendous gift of caring for the children He gives us, but they are ultimately HIS.  He may call them to Himself when HE chooses.  Being open to Life means being open to death, and understanding that Death is really just a birth into Eternal Life.   This revelation has led me to  a greater understanding of just what it means to say "Yes."   I have always thought that the Marital Act is a way of saying "Yes" to God - much as Mary did.  It is saying with our bodies the words spoken at the Consecration "This is my body, given up for You."  In the language of the body, and in our hearts, we say this to God, we say this to our spouses, and if we conceive, we say this over and over again to our unborn child.  But we must be willing to allow that "Yes" - our own personal Fiat - to include the possibility that God may want our child in Heaven with Him - before we are even able to hold him or her.  This makes saying that "Yes" an even greater act of Faith.  It also makes it mirror the Fiat of Our Heavenly Mother much more perfectly.  Mary's Fiat was lifelong - from the Visit of the Angel Gabriel, to Simeon's Prophesy of the Sword Piercing Her Heart, to the Way of the Cross, the Foot of the Cross, the Tomb, and the Resurrection and Ascension.  Mary's "Yes" was all-encompasing, total surrender to Our Loving Father.   A surrender to His Will not only for herself, but for her Child - the baby she carried under heart for nine months, and wrapped in swaddling clothes.  As mothers, this is what God asks of us as well - total surrender, and a real Openness to Life, and God's plan for that Life.  

Life

Its been a few weeks now since I learned that my beautiful baby Claire was never to live outside the womb.  Its been just over 2 weeks since her burial, and I find that my heart is so full, and that I cannot stop pondering over this thing we call "Life."   I am all over the place with my thoughts, thinking of so many things, some sad, some happy, some bitter.....and yet I keep returning to two main themes in my ponderings.  (I should mention that I've been battling a bought of insomnia so I have had a LOT of time to ponder things when I should otherwise have been sleeping!)

The first theme I can't seem to get away from is what it truly means to be "Open to Life" and the second theme I can't seem to escape is really more of a question, "Just what does it REALLY mean to be Pro-Life?"  In between these musings I have had some profound revelations about the Communion of Saints and our Sorrowful Mother.  (September, I just learned, is the month dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which seems so appropriate right now, that  I made sure to start a novena to Our Dolorous Mother to last for all of September.  One of my intentions is to pray for all those mothers and father who have ever lost a child - whether through abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth, or circumstances that arose after the child was born.)

In the next few posts I will muse and ponder these themes, but before I begin I want to once again thank those of you who have been praying for our family.  Your prayers have truly blessed us - while we are heartbroken and sad, we have felt such a showering of Grace and Peace, that I know God's Will is being accomplished, and His Will is perfect.  

Thank you and God Bless you.