Abortion attempt survivor. Voice for the voiceless.

“Every pregnancy is different,” people kept reminding me.  “It must be a boy, who has the disposition of his father, all laid-back and calm, not fiery like his mother,” Ryan and I joked.  Call it a mother’s intuition, but I knew there was something incredibly different about my second pregnancy than my first.

Little did I know when I wrote an article in early September 2011 for LifeNews that the major difference in my two pregnancies was that the first resulted in a live birth, and the second would tragically end by a miscarriage at 11 weeks.

What  first started out as a mildly complicated pregnancy, when I was diagnosed with a ruptured ovarian cyst that I feared may result in miscarriage, quickly eased into a pregnancy absent of many of the uncomfortable symptoms that I experienced during my pregnancy with Olivia.  No heartburn-hooray! No morning sickness-great! But as the 79 days of my pregnancy progressed, my contentment and joy with my pregnancy and the presence of our second child developing in the womb took a terrible turn.  Although it’s  fairly common for women to experience spotting and bleeding during pregnancy, I couldn’t shake the fear that there was nothing normal about what was happening to me.  As I traveled across the U.S. for speaking engagements throughout September and October of 2011, I maintained frequent contact with my OB-GYN’s office, who was not overly concerned about my symptoms.  When my symptoms increased to include abdominal pain and cramping in late October, however, the nurse inquired if I would feel better if I had an ultrasound to confirm that all, was indeed, okay.

As the day of the ultrasound grew near, Ryan and I began to contemplate all of the “what-if’s” of the pregnancy and our child’s life.  Maybe there was truly something wrong? Maybe there was something physically wrong with me? I had done my research over the course of the preceding weeks.  It could be something as simple as a chorionic hematoma, a clot that formed between the placenta and the baby.  Bed rest until the blood clot passed might be ordered, which was more than fine with me.  I hate to sit still for any length of time, but I would do whatever it took to protect our child’s life.  Maybe there was something wrong with our baby? We were prepared to learn whatever the diagnosis and give our child all of the love and care necessary.  Maybe there had truly been a miscarriage, and our child was no longer alive? It crossed both of our minds, and we let the concerns and fears cross our lips, but Ryan and I held onto the hope that our ultrasound appointment would calm our fears and allow us the opportunity to come face to face with our second child for the first time.

The nagging fears came back full force as I described my weeks of symptoms and concerns to the ultrasound technician, and she began to perform the ultrasound.  As Ryan and I watched as

the images were projected onto the large, black television screen on the wall, the tears began to flow from my eyes.  There was no baby.  Picture after picture was taken of the womb.  We saw the gestational sac.  The empty gestational sac.  There was no baby.  And despite the ultrasound technician’s professionalism and compassion, encouraging us to wait for the results to be read by the radiologist before forming any conclusions, I knew.  Our child was gone.  I didn’t need a radiologist to tell me what my body, and truly God, had been telling me for weeks.  I had prepared myself for this moment, but yet, when it came, the pain was more than I could bear.

As Ryan and I waited for what seemed like hours in the dark quiet of the exam room, for the results of the radiologist’s assessment to come back, I crumpled into a heap in my husband’s lap and began the drawn out process of mourning for our child.  Little could my husband have known when we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary just two days beforehand, that he would soon be trying to console and support his wife who had now become yet another statistic, in addition to an abortion survivor—one of the 1 in 4 women whose pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Although it is often easy for those with even the strongest of faith to question God during times of difficulty, I knew that God was sitting right there in the exam room with Ryan and I that fateful day in October, holding our hands, as we learned the painful truth of our child’s passing.  Not only did I feel Him there, but I saw Him, and I felt Him moving every day of our child’s life, opening my eyes and widening my heart for what was to come.  It’s hard for me to be brief in describing God’s presence during these experiences, but I will highlight the most poignant moments.

When I was not quite 9 weeks pregnant, God came to me in a dream.  I was in Indiana that night, having spoken at an event there that evening before heading off from there to Virginia for an event later that week.  In the dream, I experienced all of the symptoms of the miscarriage that I later went on to have, which, non-coincidentally, started four days after I had the dream.  In the dream, I remember crying out, “I don’t know why this is happening!” As I cried out, God was sitting there with me, holding my hand, and He calmly stated, “You don’t know yet, but I do.  Don’t be afraid.”  I remember waking up in a cold sweat that night, scared to death of what it might mean, but remembering, too, that I had nightmares about miscarriage during my pregnancy with Olivia.  As I tried to interpret the meaning of the dream in the following days, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that this was no ordinary nightmare that I had experienced.  It was God, Himself, with a very clear message.

When the miscarriage symptoms started four days later, I was fearful, but not surprised.  The dream had prepared me for what was to come.  But what, exactly, was coming? As the days passed and my symptoms remained constant and later intensified, I didn’t know the painful truth, that our child had ceased developing and I was miscarrying, but the Lord  knew, and He was right there by my side.  In fact, not only did He walk with me, but He brought others into my life who would be of great support to our family in our time of loss.

On October 22^nd, I was blessed to speak at a benefit for the Paul Stefan Foundation, which is located in Locust Grove, Virginia.  As the foundation’s website (www.paulstefanhome.org) states, they are a “pro-life home, for those involved in a crisis pregnancy, that came into existence through the intercession of St. Andrew and Our Lady of Guadalupe.”  The foundation is named after Paul Stefan James who was born and died on December 13, 2005.   He was carried to term and delivered despite his mother having been advised to secure an abortion.  I was honored to meet Paul Stefan James’ parent’s, Randy and Evelyn, and as I spoke that evening at the gala, the words that kept coming from my lips were about God’s will, answering His call for our lives, whatever that call is, and the beauty that unfolds in this world when we simply say yes to Him.  It’s not out of the ordinary for the Holy Spirit to move me in one direction or another when I speak, but that night, I was so emotionally connected to those particular words, to Randy and Evelyn’s loss, and to the amazing good that was now being done for women and children in need through their son’s life, that I was overcome.

I could feel deep down in my soul that God was opening my eyes and widening my heart that night to something that I couldn’t yet understand, and as I became acquainted with the women at my table that evening—including a perinatal hospice nurse who had cared for Paul Stefan James and a young woman who had created a foundation that supports those who have experienced loss, LLOST (The Loss of Loved Ones Through Sudden Tragedy), http://www.llost.org/, after losing her brother through a tragic accident, I knew that none of this was an accident.  None of the experiences, none of the acquaintances I was making were happenchance.  God was widening His circle of support for me and preparing me for the inevitable.

This is a continuation from part one, Abortion Survivor Reflects on the Pain of Her Miscarriage.

“Was this pregnancy planned?” the doctor asked Ryan and I, as we sat in her office the morning after our ultrasound, for what was to be our first scheduled prenatal appointment, but which had also turned out to be our last.  I had already been crying in the office for well over five minutes before she asked us this, after initially trying to put on a brave face for the nurse, who compassionately let us know that she had seen the results of the ultrasound and knew what we knew, while kindly giving us her condolences for our loss.  I had the look about me of a woman who had experienced a deep loss, who was going through something traumatic; literally I had been crying more on than off for over 24 hours and had the looks about me to prove it.  Yet, seeing my mournful state, the doctor still inquired whether our pregnancy was planned.  I sensed that somehow she thought she was doing the right thing by asking us this, but really?! Was she under the belief that if our pregnancy was unplanned that losing our child didn’t hurt as much? That maybe somehow I was grateful, deep down inside, that our child had passed away? If she said something like that to me, knowing full well that I’m an abortion survivor and take such words very seriously, what did she say to other women, to other couples?

Just as I knew throughout the preceding weeks when God was opening my eyes and widening my heart for what was to come, the loss of our child, sadly, I knew at that moment in the doctor’s office that this was just the beginning of the journey for me.  I knew that there was much, much more I was going to experience throughout this process of loss that would forever change me and even affect what I believe about abortion.

My eyes were once again opened, as I proceeded later that morning to the pre-op appointment for the S & C, suction and curettage, that was scheduled for me for the following day.  Hearing words like miscarriage, surgery, D & C, S & C, are painful and scary enough for any woman, but for me, as an abortion survivor, the words pierced my heart like a knife.  I stayed up all hours of the night after finding out about the loss of our child, praying for his soul, praying for our family’s healing, and praying that God would finish what had been started, so that I didn’t have to go through the trauma of having the S & C done.   It sounded too much like an abortion.  I couldn’t stand the thought of them taking what was left of our child, even if it didn’t include his body.  But that was not His plan.  Physically, my body had been struggling to complete the miscarriage for weeks, and it was apparent that I would not be able to do this on my own

Due to a quick scheduling change on the part of the medical office, I headed into the appointment by myself , having convinced myself and my husband that I could do it alone.  It wasn’t going to be a big deal, just some paperwork, right? I felt deeply sorry for the medical clerk who greeted me that morning, who could see my tear-streaked and swollen face, my jaw set in an attempt to hold off an outpouring of my continued grief, and still had to process me through like every other patient, knowing, full well, what I was there for, my referral from the OB-GYN lying in front of her.  In the midst of my own trauma, I reflected at that moment on how it must be for the staff at abortion clinics.  How do they handle a woman as she walks through THEIR doors? Is she just another patient? Do they see her tears? Her pain?  As I grabbed a seat with my back to the door and gratefully, most of the patients, I couldn’t help but wonder about how many other women do the same each day? Whether in cases of miscarriage like ours, or in the case of an abortion, how many women enter a medical facility alone and face the wall so that they can try to blend in with the wallpaper like me?

As I looked around the room at all of the women, most with swollen, pregnant bellies, and still others with their newborns, all waiting to be seen by the doctors, I was overcome with grief.  If I could have found a corner of the room to throw up in, I would have.  But instead, I sat frozen in my seat, swollen tears falling from my face as I tried to shut out all that I saw and all that I felt churning inside of me.  It was ironic to be sitting there, knowing that my child had died and I now had to complete the process of losing him with medical assistance, while so many women around me were full of life or had just given birth to their children.  As I struggled to keep myself pulled together, I was reminded of something I have said to others, time and time again as a pro-life speaker:  “We never know what someone has gone through or is currently going through in their life, so it’s important not to judge or condemn them, but simply show love to them.”  Looking around that room, I wanted desperately to have been one of the other women, to not have our child lose his life, but who was I to judge? Who was I to know what those women had been or were going through? As I look longingly at a family with two children, a pregnant woman, a woman with her newborn, I remind myself of this still every day.

Although every piece of that day, including my pre-op appointment, preparing myself and my family for my surgery the next day, and sadly, telling our darling Olivia about the loss of her sibling were impactful and eventful, for the sake of time, I will fast-forward to the day of my surgery.  As Ryan and I sat in my room at the surgery center that Wednesday morning, and as each medical professional interacted with us, it felt surreal.  This couldn’t be me that I saw all of these things happening to? I felt detached from myself.  I felt numb.  I was grief-stricken over our child’s death.  I had never had surgery before, so I was scared out of my mind.  And despite my husband sitting right there with me, I felt so alone.  As the anesthesiologist asked me what the surgery was for, I thought I was going to scream out loud from the pain, and all the while, I wondered, “Do they think that I want to do this? Do they know what happened? Do they know that our child is already gone?”  And once again, I started to think about all of the women who have abortions.  What does an experience like this have to be like for them? How must they feel?

As I followed the nurse down the long hallway to the operating room that morning, the sobs once again racked my body.  I wanted to keep what was left of our child.  I didn’t want to do this.  I felt so alone.  As I climbed up onto the operating table, my sobbing increased.  I didn’t want to hyperventilate and make all of it even worse, but I couldn’t stop my crying.  “I’m so sorry,” I told the nurses, as they prepped me for surgery and tried to support me.  “It’s not you  or what you are doing, it’s just been a rough few days.  It’s so painful,” I remember telling the trio of nurses surrounding me.  “We know, honey, we’re so sorry for you,” the nurse said, as she began the IV-drip.  “This will help you calm down.”  Every step that I took down that hallway, every tear I shed as I lay on the operating table, in the midst of my own pain, I couldn’t stop thinking about the women who have abortions.  With all of the love and support that I had from my husband, family and friends, I still felt so alone, so scared.  What must it be like for a woman who has no support? I knew what had happened to our child and about the procedure that I was going through.  What about the women who are not educated about the development of their child, who is not told the truth about the abortion procedure, its’ potential complications, its’ consequences?

LifeNews.com Note: This is the third and final part of a series on miscarriage from abortion survivor and national speaker Melissa Ohden, who shares her own story about recently overcoming the pain and grief of a miscarriage through a strong belief in God. Read parts one and two.

Just three days after finding out through the ultrasound that our child had stopped developing and had passed away, just one day after undergoing the S & C, I spoke as scheduled at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.  Some may call that crazy, but I call that ‘by the grace of God go I.”  He knew all that was going to transpire when I scheduled that date to speak, and with the university being close to our home in Sioux City, Ryan and I reflected on what a good opportunity it was to speak for the first time after all that had transpired with my family there to support me.

God gave me the strength to speak that night, just as He always does, and I was taken aback that night, as I have been every night since losing our child, by just how heavy of a burden, yet how transformational of a power, exists in grief.  I have never felt so weak as when I knew that our child had died and there was nothing I could do about it.  I have never felt so unprepared as a wife and a mother as when I had to first tell my husband that I believed something was wrong with the pregnancy, and later when we had to prepare Olivia, over the course of a number of days, for the reality of her sibling’s passing.  I have never felt more vulnerable than I did during those days when we first found out about the miscarriage and I went through the medical appointments and surgical procedure.

I’ll be honest–I still lie awake many a night talking to God about why all of this happened, about what His divine plan is for our child’s life, for our family, and for our ministry.  My heart aches with a grief that I never knew existed.  The fears and anxieties about life  that I first faced years ago after finding out the truth about being an abortion survivor and spent years working through, stirred once again in my soul during the first few days of our loss.  That’s the by-product of experiencing a trauma, of facing a loss—it rocks your foundation, it shakes your core.  Yet despite all of the pain, there is something beautiful rising up from these ashes.  There is a transformation happening within me, within our family, that brings me peace and fills my grieving heart with joy.

Even in my times of vulnerability, even in my times of feeling weak and unprepared on this journey, I was being lifted up by God, and so was my entire family.  And the

woman who felt shattered and broken just a few short weeks ago, has found an inner strength that is even greater than the one she had known before as an abortion survivor.  I am a woman, like so many others, who has lost a child through miscarriage.  It is not something I wanted to experience, but let’s be honest, I never was looking to be an abortion survivor, either.  Now both are a part of who I am, and God-willing, I will continue to become a better person not in spite of, but because of them.

Our family, that was once so carefree, so full of joy about our family growing in number, so joyful about life and serving others, is a bit heavier in the heart these days, but we are all more in love with one another and with the Lord, than we have ever been.  We have not turned our hearts from Him; He did not turn His face from us.  Our hearts have been broken with what breaks His, and now our resolve in saving and transforming lives has been further strengthened.

Despite the pain of this experience, my miscarriage inexplicably always leads me back to the pain of abortion.

As an abortion survivor, as a woman, as a mother, I can’t turn away from this.  For far too long, women have been told that an abortion would fix whatever problem they were facing in their lives, far too often women have been told that the child they are carrying is not yet a child, and they are not yet a mother.  Obviously, I always knew this was a falsehood, but what I’ve gone through recently has given me an additional perspective on how I can address these issues in our society.

Despite our great loss, I can’t imagine not experiencing the joy that we did over our child’s conception.  I can’t imagine not sharing in the love of our child with our family and friends, of sharing it with the world.  I can’t imagine not learning the difficult but beautiful lessons about life and death that we have through this experience.  Losing our child through miscarriage does not undo all that was done.  He was conceived.  He was loved.  I was blessed to carry him.  We are all blessed to carry him now in our hearts till we meet him again.  I want every woman to know that her child’s life, her experience in carrying her daughter or son, is a gift, no matter how it’s packaged.

Looking back on these past couple of months, I can easily see that I am not the same woman I was before I experienced this miscarriage.  My heart is a little wider with pain, my eyes have been opened with grief, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.  I can think back to the Melissa I was before I married Ryan, the wife I was before I was blessed to be a mother, and although I was happy with myself and my life during each of those seasons in my life, I would never want to go back to being the woman that I was in any of them.  Because through God’s grace and my personal choices in the moments of adversity that I faced during each of these seasons, through every experience, every situation, I learned, I grew, and I changed.

Although I would give anything for our son to still be alive, to still be carrying him in my womb, I wouldn’t change what I’ve learned through this journey of loss, the woman that I am continuing to grow to be as a result of it.  That is the transformational power that exists in surviving major difficulties, thriving in the face of painful traumas, and overcoming great losses.  That is the transformational power, too, of grief.

Yes, sadly, once we experience pain and trauma, we will never be the same, but God-willing, we will walk through the dark tunnel of difficulty and loss to ultimately come out on the other side of life.  A life that will never be the same, but one that has been transformed for the better.

Little did I know when I began working on this book, that we hope to have published in the next 12 months, that our lives would continue to provide experiences and events that would give a new meaning and new perspective to the journey from surviving to thriving and ultimately overcoming pain and adversity in our lives.  Sadly, as many know, we lost our second child last week at 11 weeks, through miscarriage.  This experience, as painful as it has been, is, and will continue to, make us better people, through God’s grace and our own choices in living through it.  Here is a brief glimpse into how our child’s life and our loss of him is shaping us thus far, and how we hope to help others as a result:

An excerpt from ‘Surviving to Thriving, the Journey in Overcoming’:

The funny thing or maybe, more correctly, the not so funny thing about the journey in surviving, thriving and overcoming is that it isn’t a one-time event.  It’s a process, and in reality, our lives are full of experiences and events that will challenge us, provide opportunities for emotional, mental, physical, relational and spiritual growth, and through God’s grace and our personal choices in those moments of adversity, we can overcome them and in doing so, become better people.

Even though I had been working on this book for some time, I didn’t truly understand this concept until November of 2011, when we lost our second child through a miscarriage at 11 weeks.  Although I have survived, thrived in the face of, and ultimately overcome many adversities in my life, I had, what I realize now in hindsight, taken for granted that a new and often even more painful experience or event is just around the corner, no matter how many storms we have weathered in the past, no matter how deep our relationship with Christ or how strong our faith.

I knew the statistics—1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, but never once in my life had I thought that I would be the statistic.   That only happens to “other people,” right? I’ve been through more than my fair share of pain and loss—that one wasn’t meant for me, or so I wanted to think.   If I can be one of just a handful of abortion survivors out of tens of millions of lives lost, however, I can certainly be any other statistic, including that of miscarriage.  As I’ve said, over and over again, the Lord never promised that this life would be easy, and He never guaranteed we’d be comfortable in this earthly world, but I’m sure, like me, when faced with an obstacle or painful experience, you’ve often thought, ‘why me? Why me AGAIN? Haven’t I experienced enough? Haven’t I hurt enough? Why not ‘so and so’ (fill in the blank with whoever comes to mind) with their seemingly perfect life this time and not me?’  As I watched, in horror, as my child’s life seemed to end before my eyes (in reality, their life had ended at just a few weeks gestation, due to a chromosomal abnormality, and my body was slow in catching on, or maybe, like my own spirit, didn’t want to believe that they were gone) and my body began the painful process of miscarriage over a course of a number of weeks, I vacillated between hope and despair, believing in God’s infinite wisdom in His plans for our child and our family, and questioning why, yet again, I was faced with what felt like insurmountable pain and suffering.

I knew, in my heart, that the Lord did not give us our precious child, made in His own image, just to take him so abruptly away, (I believe our young child was a boy, who I have named Gabriel, moved by the Holy Spirit to thus name him—‘God is my strength’-our mighty guardian angel), but in His redeeming grace, intervened in the midst of our crisis, and is using our Gabriel, and our pain in losing him, for great and mighty things.  Who knows how many people will experience the opportunity to survive, thrive, and overcome their own losses as a result of this very book, and our son’s short life?! Great and mighty things, indeed.   Knowing this brings me a sense of peace and joy, but it most certainly does not take away what we experienced in losing him, and does not take away our pain.  It is up to us to work through the pain, to have our eyes opened, our hearts widened, and our love and faith deepened, with the help of the Lord, to ultimately come out on the other side of the tunnel of pain and sadness, to a life that will never be the same, but one that is transformed for the better.