Miscarriage  |  2nd Trimester/Still Birth  |  3rd Trimester/Still Birth  |  Infant Loss/Death  |  Pregnancy   |  Termination  |  Infertility  |  Children With Special Needs

Unanswered Prayers by Jodi

Several years ago there was a popular country and western song titled "Unanswered Prayers". The singer was thanking God for not answering his prayer as a teenager and giving him his first love as a wife. Well, as Christians we know that there is no such thing as unanswered prayers. God always answers our prayers. We may not like the answer, but we always get one. But for the purpose of this article, I will say "I thank God for unanswered prayers".

"Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives and His disciples followed Him. On reaching the place, He said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation." He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will but yours be done." An angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like blood falling to the ground. Luke 22: 39-44

As you can see by this scripture, Jesus prayed for something (and it says He prayed earnestly) and did not receive the answer He preferred. Have you ever prayed so hard for something that your sweat on your brow was like blood? I know I haven't; yet that is exactly what the Bible says Jesus did.

When I was a teenager I had a dream. It was not to become a doctor or a teacher or to even be rich and famous---it was simply to become a mother. I used to go into my room, close the door and pretend I was pregnant. I would put a pillow under my shirt and sit there and just imagine and sometimes my imagination was so strong that I could almost feel a baby move. Yes, I was a child and this was a childish act---but the desire to be a mother was that strong. Because of my impatience to become a mother, I did not wait for God to show me the man He had chosen for me; instead I accepted the first proposal I had. I was so excited when 6 months later I discovered I was pregnant, only to be devastated a week later when I miscarried. After 16 months of trying to get pregnant and several times thinking I could be because of symptoms but finding out I wasn't, I finally became pregnant again only to miscarry this one as well. I have been asked "Weren't you angry?" "Didn't you ever question God?" Of course, I was angry! I wanted to know WHY? Why wouldn't God answer my one desire---my one prayer---to become a mother?

Unfortunately, my marriage fell apart, but when it did I was able to look back and say, "If we had had children it would have been so much harder". This did not mean that I didn't still miss my babies, because I did, but I could see that God had a master plan. I just thought, well maybe I will still be a mother someday, when it is right in God's timing.

Several years later, the Lord led me to a church where I met and married Tom. I wanted to be sure that he knew from the very first that we might never be able to have children "of our own". But you know, as usual, God is sooo good--- after testing, we found that the infertility problem was not just mine; it was a problem that we both shared. We were told that it was "humanly impossible" for us to have a child together. Because it was a shared problem, we couldn't say to each other "it's your fault" or "if it weren't for you…" we had equal responsibility in it, and it became a shared burden.

So we started looking into the possibility of adoption. Are you aware of how expensive it is to adopt through an agency? You are looking at spending between 15 and 30 thousand dollars. There was no way we could afford that, so we started checking into the possibility of a private adoption. We let everyone we could think of know that we were wanting to adopt. Twice we started working with birth moms only to have them change their minds before the baby was born. Then there was Joseph. We were so excited about him. I was so involved with the pregnancy; I went to all the doctor's appointments, saw the sonograms and heard the heartbeat. I connected with him before he was even born. I was at the hospital when he was born and the bond between us was instantaneous. I could never love a child "of my own" more than I loved and still love him.

When the adoption fell through and we had to give him back to his birth parents when he was 11 months old, I thought I would die. It was as if he had died, yet in a way it was worse, because we knew he was out there and we had no control. We did not know how he was. Was he safe? Was he warm? Did he eat for them? Did he cry for us? It was one of the hardest times of my life. Was I angry with God? Yes, I ranted and raved, I asked God "Why?" I even spent a short time blaming God for taking my "Angel Baby" (as I called him) away from me. I just wanted to understand why God would allow such a thing to happen. Was I such an awful person? Was He punishing me? I would pray daily that God would give me some answers, that He would protect my boy and that He would give me a forgiving heart so that I would be able to forgive my brother for the pain he had caused me by taking my baby away from me.

During this time, I found a book on tape that I started listening to. I know that God led me to that tape so that I could find some answers. The name of it is "How To Keep The Faith-When God Doesn't Make Sense". Through this book I was able to look at my experience in a different way. I had prayed for years that God would let me be a mother---well, God answered that prayer. He allowed me 11 precious months of being a mother to Joseph. I was able to enjoy all the things that mothers enjoy. You know, the sleepless nights, 2 am feedings, colic, teething, first smiles, first words, having a child call you "mama". I never specified to God that He was to let me be a mother forever, just that I wanted to be a mother. Luckily, by the GRACE of GOD, he is back in our lives, only he is now called Korey and I am his Aunt and not his mother. It was more than we had expected for a while, and it was and is enough, thanks to God's leading and direction in our lives.

After the experience with the adoption, we were, to say the least, leery and scared of trying to adopt again. Some would say that our faith was not very strong at that point, and they would be right. I don't think God blamed us for being scared, but I did not feel that we could go through any of that again. So we started checking into infertility treatments again. With my insurance at work I was able to try artificial insemination. After several tries, I became pregnant again, only to miscarry on Mother's day 1998. I had a journal that I was writing in at that time, and on the day of my third miscarriage, I asked God why he would not let me experience a longer-term pregnancy. All I had ever dreamed of was to actually know what it was like to be pregnant. Again, you could say that I ranted and raved at God. I know that He understands and does not blame us when we are angry.

I was determined that I would never put myself or my family through the pain of another loss. I again started checking into adoption, but the cost of adopting through an agency was just so high. And I just couldn't bring myself to face private adoption again. I became discouraged and finally decided that I would just have to accept the fact that I would never give birth to a child and I would never again be a mother.

But you know God moves in such mysterious ways. Several months later we found out that I was getting new insurance at work and miracle of miracles it covered invetro. No insurance that I had ever heard of covered this. Everyone I spoke with that had endured infertility was shocked. I felt that the Lord was telling me to try again. So we did.

When I found out I was pregnant with the twins, I was so excited, but I was so very scared. Each day felt like a month. I was not sure I could endure it and wanted it to hurry up, yet I also wanted to savor every single experience. I did spend most of my pregnancy having to "take it easy" and "keep my feet up", but as each day passed I felt more and more secure. I had the morning sickness, the tiredness, the indigestion, I heard the heartbeats, I saw them on sonograms, I watched my stomach grow as the month's passed, and such joy-I felt them move. Then on July 12th, during a sonogram they discovered my cervix was dialated and they rushed me into surgery. They told me that I would have to remain on total bed rest until they came, but that was ok with me. I would do WHAT EVER I had to, as long as I could keep my babies safe. I prayed so hard for God to make everything all right. That I would hold on until 24 or 25 weeks. But then on August 3rd I began to get the feeling that God had a different plan for me. I still prayed fervently that I would finally become a mother, but I knew in my heart that something was happening. When I realized I was in labor, I actually felt calm. My water broke about 4 in the morning on August 4th and for the first time I really started praying earnestly for God's Will to be done for my babies. I felt such a peace come over me. I prayed that God would give me the strength to handle whatever came my way. And He did. While everyone was rushing around trying to get everything ready to send me back to Dallas, I felt as if I was in the eye of a hurricane. I felt so calm and so at peace inside. I knew that no matter what, I would be ok. It was as if God had spoken to me in actual words and said "Jodi, I let you have the morning sickness, I let you hear the heartbeat, I let you see the sonograms, I let you feel the movements, and now I am going to let you give birth. I have answered your prayer. Now I have another plan for you and for the lives of your babies."

I knew before I ever left Tyler, that I would not be bringing my babies back home with me. But as I said, I had that sweet peace that only God can give, a peace that passes all understanding. You know to the world, I have a lot of "unanswered prayers", but I know that God answered every one of them. He allowed me to experience all the discomforts and joys of pregnancy long enough to the point of giving birth. I know now what each of those things feel like. I held in my hands the answer to all my prayers and they were so beautiful.

God gave me such a blessing the day my boys were born. A blessing that I will never forget. He has allowed Tom and I to use the experiences He has given us to minister to others. I have heard so many times "you are so strong" or "you are the strongest person I know". I do not hesitate to tell them that I am not strong at all. I am very weak. But my God is strong. I truly feel that He will use the lives of all three of my boys, as well as the other three babies that I lost, to continue to minister to others. If only one life is enriched and strengthened in their relationship with God, then the death of my babies will be glorified, but I know that a lot more than one life will be touched.

So again I want to say, I thank God for "unanswered prayers" because if it had not been for them, my life would have been so much poorer. I still pray that someday we will be able to be parents "for the long haul" so to speak. I know that I will never again experience a pregnancy, because I have had to have a hysterectomy, but we are still pursuing adoption. I know that if it is not in God's will for us to parent a child again, that He has so many more riches planned for us than we could never begin to imagine. And my prayer is that I can continue to give GOD all the praise and glory for my Faith, my Strength, and my LIFE!!

In mid September of 2005, my boyfriend and I got the news that we were pregnant. Well, at the time, I was only 17 and had just graduated high school. My father didn't take it to well at first, but after about a month he found the idea exciting. I went in for my first ultrasound on October 15,2005 and hearing that heatbeat with my boyfriend,aunt,and cousin with me was the greatest feeling. Right then it made it more real to me. My second ultrasound was scheduled for November 9,2005, which was also my 18th birthday. My boyfriend and I went in on the 9th of November with no worries in the world; just plain excitment. The doctor took me into the room and did a external ultrasound. There wasn't a sound so he thought maybe my uterus was too tight still to hear so he brought us into another room and did an internal one and we looked up on that monitor and there still wasn't a sound. You could see the tiny little creation just lying there lifeless. I then began to cry and for a long time I wondered why it happened to me. I was 12 weeks when this happened and even then it was the hardest thing. But I thank God for giving me the opportunity to be a mother and I know one day he/she will be reunited with mommy and daddy!

I married my best friend in 1999. We had dated for three years, and almost immediately were ready to start a family.

I realized something wasn’t right just a few months after we started trying to get pregnant. Almost immediately after I stopped taking birth control, I stopped having my monthly cycle. I spent the first year taking pregnancy tests each week, convinced that they were just all defective. If I wasn’t having a period, then I must be pregnant. What else could it be? Finally, after the first year, I got my head on straight and decided to see a doctor. I went through several doctors the first year, looking for one to tell me what I wanted to hear or give me a quick fix. I got my diagnosis of PCOS fairly quickly, but in 2000 this was still a new term and there wasn’t a set opinion on treatments. I even had one doctor put me back on birth control to get pregnant! I would usually leave the doctor’s office in tears, convinced I hadn’t been heard and wasn’t being taken seriously. We were still fairly young and were often told that we had lots of time. But, time passes quickly and that can change in an instant.

By year two we were able to move back home to Longview and I found a doctor that didn’t dismiss me as being too young. After a few months of monitoring and treatment, he put me on my first round of Clomid. This was in February of 2002. It was a new year and I felt like I was finally doing something about getting pregnant. That first round of Clomid was rough. I spent two weeks terrified that I had lost my mind and I missed several days of work because I simply couldn’t stop crying long enough to do anything. But we thought it would all be worth it in the end. March 8, 2002, the day before my 24th birthday, I finally got a positive result on those dreaded pregnancy tests. Of course, I didn’t believe it so took three more; but they were all positive. We were so excited that the next night, at my birthday dinner, we made the announcement to our family and friends. We managed to tell everyone we knew that day. It was the best present I have ever gotten.

I was able to experience my pregnancy for one wonderful, amazing week. Exactly one week after that birthday dinner, I began having cramps that seemed to get worse as the day went on. I was at work and had taken a break to go to the restroom when I noticed the spotting. I immediately called my doctor’s office in a panic. He was away on spring break, so I was told to go to the ER. As I drove myself there, I called my mother to meet me and had a long talk with God. I was busy convincing myself that this was nothing and I was overreacting and didn’t even want to call my husband. I thought it would just be a funny story I could tell him over dinner that night. Eight hours later, I was released from the ER. The doctor on duty had run tests and done a sonogram, but since the cramps had let up and the bleeding had stopped, he decided I was trying to miscarry and sent me home. I hate that term, “trying to miscarry�, like it is a choice and we should just stop trying if we want to have our babies. I spent the night crying and worrying, convinced I had done something wrong to cause this. The next day the cramps started up again, but this time they were much worse. The pain was so bad I started sweating and vomiting. So, we were back at the ER where I was examined again. This time it was determined to be an ectopic pregnancy and they preformed an emergency laparoscopic surgery.

Some days it feels like this all happened yesterday, and others it seems like a lifetime ago. Since then I have gone through two more doctors and more testing. I even tried Clomid again, but there have been no more pregnancies. It is different somehow since the ectopic pregnancy. I officially feel infertile. We finally had to take some time off from trying so that we could focus on other things and decide just how far we want to go. I haven’t exactly come to terms with my position on the more invasive procedures. But, I haven’t given up hope completely. I have learned that God doesn’t operate on our schedules, so we may still have that baby one day. Right now I am giving Him time to work on us and take all the glory if and when it happens. I know that He has a plan for my life, and if it isn’t to be a mother, then I am a little excited to find out what else He has in store for us.

July 3rd is a very important date in my family. First of all it is my husband’s late grandfather’s birthday. Then, on July 3, 2004, I married my best friend Michael. We have known each other since we were 5 and we were best friends in high school. From the day we became a couple there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that we would be together forever.

After we got married the obvious question of “when will you start a family?� started, and the answer was always “as soon as possible!� But we decided to wait until I graduated from nursing school. In January 2006, I was diagnosed with poly cystic ovaries and my doctor urged me to start trying to get pregnant right away, because it could take a month or it could take years. We thought this was the worst news we could ever get. Michael and I were both so ready to have a family and we couldn’t imagine waiting YEARS!

Thankfully, the doctor was wrong. It took one month of fertility pills and BANG, we were pregnant! We found out on April 20th 2006 and by my calculations I would become a mommy on Dec 6th! But on April 21st our feelings of excitement changed into fear. I was at the hospital, doing one of my last clinicals, when I started bleeding heavily. I panicked, called the doctor and by his orders, went home with my feet up for the entire weekend. Monday morning, when I went to the doctor’s office, everything looked fine. We could see a heart beating and I was no longer bleeding. However, this was just the first of MANY scares. I went into the doctor’s office just about every week with a scare due to bleeding, and every time there was nothing they could tell me other than to wait it out. I made more than 5 trips to the hospital in the first 16 weeks of my pregnancy. Between them all, I was on bed rest at home with someone taking care of me at all times.

And then, on July 3, 2006, mine and my husband’s two year wedding anniversary, I went to the hospital again with bleeding and pain; this time worse than ever before. By the time I got to the hospital, I thought I was going to die the pain was so bad and I had lost so much blood. At this point, I was 17 weeks and 6 days pregnant. At the hospital the nurse was able to find a heart beat. Only this time it was in the 120s, while all the other times it had been in the 140s. Right away, Michael and I knew something was wrong. The nurse told us not to worry, that 120s is normal for a baby; but we knew it wasn’t normal for our baby. After the nurse checked my cervix, we were told that I was dilated to 3cm and that my water had broken and that there was no other option, at this point, than to have the baby. At that moment, I knew July 3rd would never be the same for us again.

Right away I knew we couldn’t be mad. We had to see the reason for this and we needed to turn to God and to our wonderful friends and family for help. I ended up delivering our baby boy, Austin James, at 1:44am on July 4th. We are so thankful for his life and for the opportunity to be his parents. We are thankful that I survived due to the extreme blood loss, and we are thankful that I will be able to have more children soon. We know our baby boy lives a life so much better than the one we live, and we are thankful for this as well. We cannot wait for the day we can hold him again in Heaven, but until then we will do everything possible to honor his life every day of ours.

Chad and I had only been married two months when I found out that I was pregnant ... I couldn't believe it!  I was thrilled.  I had wanted to be a mommy since I was four years old.  What a blessing!  I couldn't wait to tell everyone I knew about this baby that was growing inside me.  I bought baby name books and a tiny sweater.  I was certain that I was having a girl.  I just knew it.  I could think of nothing else but that little life that was growing inside me.

My family and friends were so very excited. My mother helped me pick out a crib.  It was a beautiful antique.  I could already picture my darling little daughter fast alseep, dreaming in pink.  I prayed for her and I felt God so close to me that I could feel Him all around me.  I was at peace.

Then at exactly 12 weeks, I started to spot.  I was at the doctor's office when it started. The nurse was my mother-in-law.  She told me not to worry, to just go home and put my feet up and relax.  But I knew.  I knew in my heart that I was losing my baby girl.  I went home and waited.  The spotting became heavier the later it got and finally, at 1 a.m., I went to the hospital. I was at peace.  I was sad, but at peace.  Just when that peace started to leave me, the nurse that was on duty told me that "God has a plan for everything He does and He is in this with you."  I was so blessed by that.

Three days later I miscarried my darling little Lily.  It was the morning of December 20th, which just happend to be my dad's birthday.  My dad passed away when I was 10.  When I left the hospital, the same one that my dad had passed away in, I remember very little except that I thought my dad would love to hold my baby for me and that she was a lovely birthday present for him in Heaven.  And I was at peace. She was safe in the arms of my heavenly Father and my earthly father, the man who I had adored as a child.  What a gift that was to me.

God knows every tear we cry and He sees every hurt.  But He is the healing balm that we need to calm a broken heart.  Only the Father to the Fatherless has the ability to offer that kind of comfort.  I am blessed in my grief that He is beside me.  My child is a gift given to me to give God all the glory.