When we meet her in heaven, we’ll call her Yana. It means “God is gracious.”
But for a while, God didn’t feel very gracious.
I could feel her in my belly. I woke up one night tossing and turning because I felt so sick. That’s how I knew.
My husband rushed to the store that morning to get a pregnancy test and I knew the truth before I even saw those two little lines.
A third baby! We’d be a family of five. I got so excited about carrying her, holding her, raising her. I was immediately taken back to how fulfilling nursing my first two babies felt, and I had butterflies dreaming about the newborn phase again. My heart grew imagining how much fun August and Eden would have with a new baby sibling.
I went to the doctor to have bloodwork done. Things looked good. My pregnancy looked normal and we scheduled an ultrasound.
We told our families and close friends. We celebrated. We looked at the calendar and estimated that we’d meet her around Christmas.
We asked August if he thought Mommy would have a boy or a girl. Confidently and repeatedly, August proclaimed, “It’s a girl. A baby girl!”
And so, we began dreaming of having another girl.
With all of that excitement, we were overwhelmed with the timing of my pregnancy. We were expecting our foster care license any day, and now I was feeling first trimester sick and tired. How would I balance mothering my two toddlers and introduce a new, older child to our family while being pregnant and experiencing all the symptoms my pregnancies bring?
By the time I wrapped my mind around all that and felt more confident to take it all on, we found out she was gone.
We never saw her heart beat on an ultrasound. God took her home before we ever saw her.
And while I was at the doctor realizing my worst nightmare and waiting to have more blood work done, I got a text message that a different dream of mine had finally come true. Congratulations, we were officially licensed to foster. I sat and stared at my phone as a nurse called my name three times. I couldn’t hear anything. All I could do was see the words on my phone screen “open to foster” and feel the emptiness inside me.
What is God doing to me right now?
I cried hard for three days. Every time my daughter cried or my son said, “Mommy,” I lost it. My children’s voices made me think of a third voice I’d never get to hear.
What made it all even more upsetting was that I felt alone. My husband was there, trying to grieve with me… but he didn’t know what we were grieving exactly. We knew we lost a baby, but the reality of having one never truly sunk in for him. He never felt her. We never even got to see her or hear her heart beat.
But I could still feel her there, even though she was already gone.
My body’s inability to protect that baby’s life angered me. I wanted to punch and break and throw things. I was so mad at myself for telling people about her… I felt guilty for not protecting her existence until she was stronger. Thoughts creeped into my head like: How could I be so confident in my body that I’d let my usual 12 week rule slip? Now I would have to relive that loss over and over again as we break the news to people who knew about her.
And despite all the sadness and anger, I was desperately searching for excitement at taking in our first foster.
Eventually numbness came. And numbness turned into acceptance.
We met with my doctor to talk about it all. He said my impending miscarriage wasn’t really explainable. Sometimes chromosomes don’t do what they’re supposed to do, and we don’t know why. Her genetic make-up wasn’t strong enough to survive. There’s nothing I could’ve done to stop it.
Now I had to wait for a miscarriage.
We got a call that same night about two foster placements to consider. One was a teenager, and for two days I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I grappled with the idea of welcoming her to our family in the midst of all the anxiety of waiting for a miscarriage. What if my miscarriage started the day she moved into our home? How can I show her my joy when I’ll be in pain, and grieving? She deserves my best, but I’ll be experiencing an all-time low.
And then I thought: Who am I to weigh my trauma over hers? How could I deny her a bed and a safe place to go?
Finally, God’s grace in all this was revealed to me in a single phone call.
“God is going to use your vulnerability to connect with this foster child in a way you couldn’t have before.”
With that, we decided to take her.
The excitement of fostering was reborn in me, so to speak. The passion looked different, though. I think God rubbed some grit into my spirit so I could walk through tough things with more empathy. The anger of grief was so fresh and real for me.
The none of this make sense feeling became familiar again. Why now? still echoed in my brain. I knew I wouldn’t be able to answer all the big questions for our foster, but now I could relate to her heartbreak with new depth.
The weekend after we found out our baby was gone and we were expecting our first foster was also the weekend of my birthday. It was the most unforgettable birthday I’ve ever had because it was the same day I miscarried. I started my miscarriage on a Thursday and it lasted ten days. We welcomed our teen foster daughter into our home on day six.
That week should have wrecked me. In a way, I suppose it did. But God’s grace showed up again in a small detail. With it came peace, and true joy at meeting our first foster.
That small, monumental detail? She had rainbow hair.
God used foster care to give me my rainbow baby, and she’s a teenager.
I held my foster daughter’s hands as we sat on her bed one evening, and I told her Yana’s story. I shared my pain with her, and we cried together. I told her how August swore up and down that whoever was coming to live with us- whether she came from my belly or walked through the front door- would be a girl.
A few nights later, as our foster wrestled with fear of abandonment (typical after moving to a new foster home), I held her and we cried again. I taught her what a rainbow baby was, and I told her she was mine. “Even if we aren’t your forever parents, you will always be a piece of me. A piece of mine. My family. And I will never give up on you.”
Yana never took a breath of the air we breathe, but she has filled me with the fortitude I need to walk this path. Somehow, God used her short life to teach me a lesson on grace, perseverance and love.
And He used her to make our foster’s placement with us even more significant. I never could have predicted that my rainbow baby would walk through our front door at 14 years old. And I never would have guessed that rainbow baby of mine would be leaving our home around the same time that Yana should’ve been born this December.
Hello, God.
Your presence is abundantly clear.
I know you are a healer.
I know you are gracious.
Thank you for carrying me when I couldn’t walk.
Give Yana a hug for me.
October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. In memory of our baby, I’ve designed a card series specifically for grieving Mamas. Place your order with our family business: Meditating Images.