Welcome to A Carried Life

A Carried Life is a podcast platform for women to share the stories of the lives they carried and lost due to miscarriage. Starting Monday September 14th, 2020, this podcast will launch with my personal story of loss and how God has provided me hope in my journey. Every two weeks I will release a new episode interviewing an amazing woman of God who has experienced loss due to miscarriage. They will share with us their journey of grief, how their loss or losses impacted their lives and hopefully bring encouragement to other mothers in their grief. My prayer is that this will be a space where the grieving mother will not feel alone and that they would know that their grief is so valid.

Family and friends of a baby lost due to miscarriage – Your grief matters too.

Miscarriage is a different type of loss. It can often be kept a close secret.  It is frequently a small group of people beyond the parents who are the only ones to know about the child that was lost. For that circle around the parents of the lost baby, your grief is important and valid. The circle around the parents often receive little attention because their connection to the lost child is less direct compared to the mother and father. People may direct their love and attention at the parents in order to support them through this difficult time and from my perspective I am eternally grateful.

As a mom who has experienced it herself however, I want to acknowledge your grief as well. You lost a family member or friend. Your connection may not necessarily be the same but that does not mean you do not require your own support and time to process.

While the lost child’s mother can’t necessarily help you in your grief, seeing your grief can be a help for her. When you grieve alongside a mother of loss, it validates her grief and acknowledges her child’s life. This was one of the most healing parts of my own journey. Seeing people in my life grieve my child showed me my grief was valid and that my child was loved. Obviously, this does not mean that you should pretend to have certain emotions. Just like the mother, you are free to grieve in the way you feel is best. 

 It’s quite common for this circle of people to receive support in the case of loss that is seen here on earth. Unfortunately, miscarriage can mean the pain of this circle goes unnoticed.  If you are in this position, please feel what you need to, get the support you need. Your grief is more than valid.

My dear friend who was part of my circle  explained this so beautifully:

“There’s a difference between caring about someone who’s grieving and grieving with them. To grieve with, you have to let yourself go there – the place of all the unmet dreams and milestones. All that this little person was going to be. And you let yourself feel the weight of it all, because feeling the grief for yourself only validates the grief of your loved one, it doesn’t diminish it.”

For those in the circle, your grief matters too.

“I Lost A Child” – A Father’s Perspective of Miscarriage

       The drive home after a funeral is always the worst. I’ve unfortunately lost enough people close to me to know there’s a certain ritual to it: see the body at the wake, deep breaths through the service, keep a solemn face throughout the burial, then finally realize the person is gone forever on the way home. Cue the tears, sadness, and anything else that comes with mourning the loss of a loved one.

            Miscarriage is strange because the person lost never saw the light of day. I lost a child but knew nothing about them. It’s a weird mixture of ambivalence and deep sadness. Yet the recognizable pattern was there. We put on a brave face until the doctor confirmed we had indeed miscarried. My feelings let loose on drives I took around town afterwards. Leah was gracious enough to give me that space despite what she was going through.

            I took one of those drives the day the miscarriage was confirmed. There was no agenda other than to acknowledge my sadness and freely express it in the privacy of my vehicle. At home, my job was to be reliable. Despite the sadness, there was still work to be done, a toddler to take care of, and a mother in deep grief at the loss of her child. I decided the best thing I could do was to take these drives so I could be as reliable as possible for my family. I stopped the car, and tears began to flow as I spoke the words: “I lost a child today”.

            This doesn’t mean I isolated myself. I regularly told Leah what I was feeling in relation to the miscarriage and made sure I talked to close friends about it even if my emotions weren’t particularly strong. I’m glad I did. It reminded me that I was supported. I had access to some incredible people who had my back, and I’m very thankful for them.

            Unsurprisingly, on the way home from that first drive, I was crying so hard I had to pull over. As I drove, I pictured my child, in the presence of our Heavenly Father, say: “It’s okay, Daddy”. My child is safe. They are taken care of. They have fullness of joy. There, on the shoulder of the road, I said goodbye to my child. I’ll see them again one day.

-Evan Coghlan

The Pair Of Jeans I Will Never Wear Again But Just Can’t Give Up

After getting off the phone with my family doctor, I rushed to take off my PJs and put on a pair of light denim button-up jeans and an old white T-Shirt. On our way to the hospital, I was completely numb. My husband and I didn’t say much as we drove. Instead, he put on some worship music and held my hand. At the hospital, I put on my gown and went through a series of tests. After 6 and a half hours the doctor came into my room and told me we were having a miscarriage. Still numb, I took off my gown, pulled on those light wash jeans and old T-Shirt, and walked out of the hospital.

Grief is a funny thing. It comes in ways you would never expect and at times you can never predict. For me, one way it comes back is through that old pair of jeans.

They bring me back everytime I see them in my dresser, back to the last day I carried my baby. Those jeans hugged my little one as they slowly left the earth into Jesus’ arms. Whenever I see them I think of our little child we lost.

So why keep an item with so much pain associated with it?

For me, those jeans are a memory of the life I carried. They are  connected to a memory that I have with my baby. At times I wish I could just throw them in the trash, but I don’t. I hold on to them because I know feeling all of the emotions attached to them is a way of acknowledging that my child’s life was real and that it is okay to feel that loss.

Sometimes I quickly close the drawer and escape the pain that the jeans are even there; sometimes I hold them and remember. Either way, the limited memory of the child I carried makes me hold on to whatever I can to acknowledge their existence 

For me it is a pair of jeans; for you it may be an ultrasound, a picture, a pregnancy test or something completely different. Regardless, the memory attached to that item matters. Whether you pull it out once a year or look at it every day, you have permission to feel whatever you need to when you do.