Recently, at a gathering for women who have suffered perinatal loss, one of the retreat’s presenters said these losses often make women feel as though they’ve lost part of their identity—that of their future motherhood. Even if a woman goes on to have living children, the motherhood that was hoped for, rejoiced in, and created for that child who was lost will stay with her forever.
The women gathered at that retreat expressed something fundamental about the Catholic teaching on miscarriage, child loss, and fertility. Conception produces a child with a soul, and to lose that child is to know there is a soul waiting to meet its family in heaven someday.
In today’s secular world, infants and children are often treated as many things—clumps of cells to be discarded, experiments in science labs, features of social media content—though hardly ever as what they are: unique human beings with a physical body and an eternal soul.
The Catholic understanding of children—that they are “the supreme gift of marriage” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2378)—is a blessing that brings a certain bittersweet hope to the pain of miscarriage. A Catholic or Christian woman suffering miscarriage feels the loss of not just the pregnancy itself but an invaluable soul—“a person from the moment of his conception”—who has already left this earth and made its way back to the Father.
Bearing the Burden
The pain of miscarriage, child loss, and infertility is heavy, and for women who suffer a combination of these things, it can be excruciating.
The solutions the secular world continues to develop to “solve” pregnancy loss and infertility issues can not only be unsuccessful, they often do not adhere to the Catholic Church’s teachings on life. Often, this leaves faithful Catholic women feeling like they’ve fallen through the cracks, but there are a growing number of ways the body of Christ can support these women and families, including through nonprofit organizations like the one I helped found after my own miscarriage thirteen years ago.
Conception produces a child with a soul, and to lose that child is to know there is a soul waiting to meet its family in heaven someday.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of the child, my first, whom I miscarried on September 29, 2012, at nine weeks gestation. That baby, had he or she lived, would be almost twelve years old. For years, only my close friends and family knew about my miscarriage. I was afraid to bring it up, even in conversations where it was relevant. Despite the fact that I felt it defined me as a woman and a mother, I kept it to myself because I didn’t know how to talk about it. Would people think I did something wrong? Would they not know what to say? Would they say something well intentioned but actually hurtful?
Eventually, I gave birth to a living child, who is now ten years old, and went on to have three more children. Several years after my loss, a woman moved to my small town who had suffered three miscarriages of her own. We both had stories to tell about medical professionals brushing aside our grief and failing to shepherd us through the actual process of miscarriage, so we decided to do something about it.
In 2016, we created the Early Pregnancy Loss Association, whose mission is to ensure no one suffers miscarriage alone. After a few years, we launched our miscarriage care kit program, which provides free kits containing sanitary supplies, information, and comfort items to those experiencing the loss of a baby. Now, nearly ten years later, we have distributed more than 4,000 miscarriage care kits to women across the country. Additionally, we have provided thousands of dollars worth of medical bill relief to families who incur miscarriage-related expenses at our local hospital. We also have a podcast where we share miscarriage stories and discuss topics common to this cross, like how to bury a miscarried baby.
The statistics around the commonality of miscarriage are shocking: The Mayo Clinic reports that as many as one in five known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The percentage is higher if you include pregnancies that may be lost before a woman even knows she is pregnant. Women who have suffered one or multiple losses are not surprised by these statistics. They know what it feels like for the joy or nervous excitement of a positive pregnancy test to suddenly turn to despair when she starts bleeding or an ultrasound technician says those dreaded words: “I can’t find a heartbeat.”
At the aforementioned gathering I attended, the woman I sat next to said she was in the middle of her ninth miscarriage. Hearing stories like hers can make us feel hopeless—even those of us accustomed to working in this space. We may ask questions like: How could an all-loving God allow such things to happen? What can we as Catholics do to help support and heal families who must bear this cross?
The answer became clear at that gathering. We bear the cross together.
We give a miscarriage care kit to a woman who doesn’t know what to expect during the physical process. We set up a meal train for a family so they don’t have to worry about cooking while losing a child. We invite them to support groups. We sit with them, pray with them, hope with them.
One of the leaders at the retreat, who works for the beautiful Catholic nonprofit Red Bird Ministries, said that as Christians, we are called to help others get through times of grief not by being containers for their suffering but by being channels to help shuttle them to God, the healer of all things.
What Science Can’t Solve
Many Catholic and Christian couples face an extra challenge related to fertility and child loss: a struggle to understand the Church’s opposition to certain fertility treatments, like in vitro fertilization (IVF). These treatments are not permissible for several reasons, including that they separate the essential parts of the marital embrace—that it is unitive and procreative—and introduce a non-spousal person into the relationship. There are many couples who must grapple with this wall, but we pray they can find peace in the Church’s teachings, despite the stinging reality of their inability to conceive.
In an address Pope Benedict XVI gave on the fortieth anniversary of the publication of Humanae Vitae, he said: “What was true yesterday is true also today. The truth expressed in Humanae Vitae does not change; on the contrary, precisely in the light of the new scientific discoveries, its teaching becomes more timely and elicits reflection on the intrinsic value it possesses.”
Simply put, the breakneck speed at which the medical establishment finds new ways to “treat” infertility speaks to its drawbacks. To seek to get “ahead” of the creator of the universe is to fundamentally misunderstand the gift of life. When society misunderstands life from the moment of its beginning, there is no way we can expect it to care for a miscarrying woman for whom the lost baby was an unrepeatable, loved soul. It is up to us then to recognize the dignity of each unborn child, whether or not they take a breath on earth, and to step in to serve these families when the world cannot.
The Hands and Feet of Christ
Looking back, I see I could have benefited from talking about my miscarriage years earlier, before I became a co-founder of a miscarriage support organization.
Opening up about our crosses not only invites others to help care for us, it can make visible an invisible cross someone else may be carrying. I have found peace and purpose through my work with the Early Pregnancy Loss Association. What at first felt like nothing more than an unfair and horrible first experience with motherhood has allowed me to serve other women as they shoulder the burden of loss. As St. Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.”
We will help you carry the cross.