Remembering Jordan Gabriel

Today would have been my due date with Jordan.  Strange that a baby who lived inside me for about a week would have such a huge impact on my life -- and yet, not so strange.  To quote the elephant Horton, "A person's a person, no matter how small."  Personhood in God's eyes is not measured by size and the impact of a life is not measured by days.  For the rest of my life, February 2 will have a bittersweet ring to it. 

Jordan is the one who made me a mommy of four, who gave me the gift of a positive pregnancy test before the age of 40.  I have no way of knowing if he was a boy or a girl, but we keep leaning toward calling him "him". 

The world of medicine would shrug him off as a "chemical pregnancy" and would minimize his life by using the words "very early" to describe the miscarriage I had.  I was even advised at the time not to use early pregnancy tests anymore - so as not to know?  But not knowing does not change the fact that he lived and that, for a brief time, I was expecting and imagining the life my baby would lead and what kind of big sister my daughter would be. 

So...today I mourn and grieve the loss...but I also celebrate the life he lived here, in my womb, and the life he lives now, in the presence of God.  My loss, heaven's gain....Jordan's gain. 

When you lose a baby....

When someone loses a baby, it's common for people around them to minimize the loss, at least in their minds, by comparing it to a later loss.  At least it was early in the pregnancy...at least it wasn't a late loss...it would be so much harder if it was such-and-such an age.

What people don't always realize is that when we lose a baby, no matter what age in the womb, we lose a unique person, and we lose the child, the teenager, the adult that person would have been.

I lost Jordan in May at four weeks' gestation.  "Barely pregnant" people might say.  But when I lost Jordan...

• I lost the full-term baby I would have delivered next February.
• I lost a toddler who will never need me to kiss a scraped knee.
• I lost a five-year-old who will never start kindergarten.
• I lost a teen-ager who will never make me cringe by learning to drive my car.
• I lost a high school graduate whom I won't help pack for college.
• I lost a young adult whom I will never plan a wedding for.
• I lost a lifetime of memories that will never be made. 

Hence, my sadness.  The loss of a precious individual, a unique mix of my husband and me,whom I will not know this side of heaven.  If you, too, have had a very early loss like mine, know that you are allowed to grieve, that it is normal to grieve.  You many sometimes wonder if it was a dream, if you really were pregnant.  You were, and your baby lives on in the presence of a holy, loving God.  But it's normal and human and motherly to wish your baby were still with you now, and to shed many precious tears for the life that would have been.