October: Pregnancy + Infant Loss Awareness Month

[Trigger Warning: pregnancy and infant loss + infertility]

In 2014, when my husband and I lost our first baby, I had never felt more alone. Today, eight years later, I know more women who have experienced pregnancy loss, infertility, or pregnancy issues than those who have not. It’s likely I knew many women with similar experiences at the time, but we weren’t yet having the conversations or sharing openly about them.

It’s not like getting and being pregnant has all of a sudden gotten harder over the years, there was just a time when it seemed like no one was talking about it. The not talking about it, though, started to wrongfully attach shame on the 1 in 4 women going through the painful journey of losing a child or experiencing infertility, making them feel less than those who seemed to have an easier time at it.

In Genesis 2, Eve’s decision to listen to Satan rather than God, resulted in her, and every woman to come after her, to experience “multiplied pain in childbirth.” Multiplied physical, mental, and emotional distress as we do all that we can to bring another life into the world. It is a pain that has spanned many lifetimes, and has touched every woman’s life in one way or another. But when you’re in it, it feels like you’re the first and only one going through the hardest thing in the world. That is until someone you know starts talking about their experience with it too.

Sharing the hard things we’ve been through not only helps us heal - it can start the healing process for others too. Once we hear that someone else has been through what we’re struggling with, or has had a similar experience to ours, the malicious voices in our head start to go silent. They lose their ammunition, and beautiful things begin to take root.