It was a Friday morning on the last day of August 2018. I knew I wasn’t feeling quite right. I had a negative pregnancy test about a week prior, but something in my gut told me to take another. Sure enough, two pink lines appeared.
My husband was already at work. So I dressed our son in a "World’s Coolest Big Bro" shirt and we headed to Chris's office to tell him the news. I had Austin approach him and hand him the positive pregnancy test. Our sweet little two-year-old boy was blissfully unaware of what was going on. He just knew his job was to hand Daddy "the stick."
Like all my other pregnancies, we saw that beautiful heartbeat at the eight-week appointment. And like all the other times, there was nothing to be concerned about at that point.
Just a couple of weeks after that appointment, I had a feeling that everything was not ok. I called my doctor. They tried to reassure me that most likely everything was fine, but I insisted that I needed to come in. This was just too similar to my previous miscarriage. I had an eery feeling of deja vu.
I called a dear friend who agreed to watch Austin, and I met my husband at the doctor’s office. He was trying to have faith and stay positive. I, on the other hand, told him that he needed to prepare to receive bad news. I just knew in my gut that we lost this baby too.
We went into the exam room and proceeded to have an ultrasound. I saw the expression on the doctor’s face change. She then said the words I already knew were coming.
I was devastated to lose another child. Losing a baby is so hard. It’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever experienced. But this time, in the midst of devastation, I had hope. I knew that no matter how difficult the grieving process would be, that I would make it through. I knew that the Lord was with me in my pain, that He would not abandon me, and that He would see me through again. I knew this because of what I learned and experienced when we lost Angel.
Because this was my second miscarriage, the doctor offered to do testing to see if a cause of the miscarriage could be determined. We found out that our daughter’s death was caused by Turner’s Syndrome, which is a chromosomal abnormality. In her case, an X chromosome was missing from multiple pairs of chromosomes.
Because of the hope I had in Christ, and inspired by a Christian support group (Hope Mommies) that I had been introduced to through a sweet sister in Christ, we named our daughter Hope.
