Sara's Story

Here on the Silver Lining Sisters blog we want to provide a safe place to talk about our (and your) experiences. However, we want to do it in a way that encourages us to look at the hidden blessings. We're trying to talk about sad subjects in a positive way. So, in our posts that detail different individuals' stories, we'll provide a quick summary along with a list of the hardest parts, or the storm, followed by the blessings that we can see in retrospect (the silver lining).

I've had 3 miscarriages and 1 successful pregnancy over 7 years. The first was about 5 months after we were married, and I was living by myself with my in-laws because my husband had moved to America from England to return to school and I was waiting on my visa. After a brief period where we didn't have health insurance, we started trying again and had our second miscarriage in 2008. It took a little while to get pregnant again after that, and my third miscarriage was in 2009. Our daughter was born about a year later.

To find the silver lining there has to be a storm. The blackest clouds in my experiences were...

• Feeling like I was bothering my doctors by calling them and asking lots of questions.
• Not having enough (or any) information to understand what I was going through. I felt like I had no idea what was happening to me or how I was supposed to be dealing with it (which is part of the reason we've started this blog!).
• Telling my husband over the phone that we were losing our baby.
• Wanting my husband to be there with me.
• Being in more pain than I had ever expected or been prepared for.

In trying to write this post and decide how much detail to share, I've realized that I shut out a lot of these things. The clouds aren't what I choose to remember. Instead, I focus on the silver linings from my experiences, which include...

• Building a stronger relationship with my husband.
• Getting to know my husband's family and developing positive relationships with them in way that I wouldn't have without these experiences.
• Being able to share my storm with others who are going through or have been through similar experiences. I've had the opportunity to help people try to focus on the positive.
• Helping me realize who I was as a daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves me and knew what I was going through. 

Over the last 7 years, I've come to realize that in our society miscarriage and baby loss are a hidden taboo. I've found that there are actually many people who have had these experiences, but no one talks about it (even within families sometimes) so everyone thinks they're alone.

You're not alone. It shouldn't be this way, and this is why we're putting together this blog. We don't always need to share all the nitty gritty details, but knowing that others have been in similar situations helps us realize that we're not broken.

What do you think? 
Do you think that this is something that needs to be talked about more openly? Have you ever felt like you needed someone to talk to about your experience with miscarriage or baby loss?

Keeping up with the Joneses

You know how when you go to the deli or buy fabric or sit at the DMV and you have to get one of those little tabs with the numbers on them? Everyone gets a number, and you're served in the order that you arrived. Well every time someone said, "We've been married for 3 weeks, and we're having a baby!" I wanted to demand that they show their number and get back in line behind me. I had been in line for 6 years longer than them!!! Why were they being served first?!

But I've realized that just because it seems like the Joneses and the Smiths are served ahead of you, it doesn't prevent you from being called too. Even though my number hadn't been called yet, it didn't mean it wouldn't be. God doesn't have a limited number of babies, and He saves the best for last. =)

"oh how's the baby..."

About a month after the birth to my stillborn little girl, my husband and I attended a wedding for one of his friends. It was the first time we had seen everyone since everything had happened, and we assumed that the one couple we had talked to would have told everyone else. I was very apparently not pregnant anymore (I should have been about 7 months along), and I made sure to wear a very "hi-I'm-skinny-again" outfit.

We'd been there for all of 15 minutes when one of my husband's friend's wives came up to me, hand moving in to touch  my belly, and said "oh how's the baby...?!" (in that really high "oh it's just so sweet" kind of voices...)

I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she didn't realize I, obviously, wasn't 7 months pregnant and I responded with a icy "I'm not pregnant" while avoiding her outstretched hand. I must have given her quite the glare too cause I later found out that she was scared of me for a good year after that.

"don't you want to have kids..."

I was at a gathering for the ladies in our church when one of the women tapped me on the shoulder and said "Can I talk to you for a second?" I thought she had something really serious that she needed to talk with me about so I stepped to the side with her. She said, "Well, I see you holding and taking care of other people's children all the time. ...don't you wanna have kids of your own?"

I had already had my first miscarriage, we didn't have health insurance, my husband was a student, and there was no way, at that time, that we could try to have kids of our own. No matter how much we wanted them. So standing there, listening to her rant on and trying to find the nearest exit, honestly, I just laughed in my head and thought, "You're kind of stupid."

Welcome to Silver Linings

Sara is one of the best people I know. She always listens. She always knows what to say. She's the one you call when you don't know who else to call. And I'm blessed to have known her for about 4 years now.

I had been pregnant (with my first) for about a month when I told Sara. Five months later, when I found out that my little girl wouldn't survive, Sara was the first person other than family who I called. She helped me talk through things over the next few months and shared her experiences with her 3 previous miscarriages.

Since then, we've (mostly Sara with me along for the ride) tried to help others. Miscarriages and baby loss seem to be a taboo subject though, and we've found there aren't very many places to turn when you're looking for someone or something to help. We're creating this blog to share our stories and hopefully build a place where others feel safe enough to share their experiences and emotions or ask questions without feeling judged.

Looking back we can see the silver linings in our situations, and we hope that as you spend a little time with us you'll find something that will help you on your journey to find yours.

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