Teardrop babies.

WARNING- POSSIBLE TRIGGER FOR THOSE WHO HAVE LOST A BABY: 

Many years ago, my mother went to the hospital bleeding heavily during her 13th week of pregnancy. It was unclear on her admission if she had in fact lost the baby she had planned. She was laying in the cubicle awaiting results of the examination of her lost tissue to see if she had miscarried or not. It was in the days before ultrasound.

Eventually a nurse came in, winked conspiratorially at Mum and announced that it looked like she had miscarried. Her demeanour was like she was the bearer of good news and that Mum should be grateful that she was no longer pregnant. Mum just turned her face to the wall and cried.

As a young woman, I too had a loss of a much wanted pregnancy. At the time I conceived, I had to have an emergency surgery. I was so ill for so long after the anaesthetic that it dawned on me that it could be morning sickness. It was.

I prayed that I would not lose the baby but it was not to be. A few weeks after my morning sickness disappeared- and I was always morning sick the entire 9 months with my other babies- I started bleeding.

Eventually I lost my baby and Mum had advised me to keep any tissue I lost to show the doctor. I fetched out my lost tissue and found a little embryo, all curled up and just forming its eyes. I was devastated. 

I showed the little one to my then husband, who sniffed and said what a  silly looking little thing it was! Something inside me died and I went outside and wept for the baby who would join its stillborn twin sisters, Sarah and Ruth in God's nursery. I named it Leslie because that name would do for either gender.

Wiping my eyes, I thought about how precious these lives were and how sad most women feel when they never see the light. By far there are more women who grieve over the loss of a baby than who feel relieved or rejoice. I decided that I would call lost babies Teardrop Babies. For many would shed a tear over their loss.

No Teardrop Baby is lost to God and is known to Him and that brings me some comfort. All mothers of those babes will see them again if they know the Giver of Life. I believe that goes for aborted children as well. Many a woman who aborted a baby will suffer great anguish over that choice and if she repents, God will forgive her and show her His great mercy and grace.

No matter what people tell us about our lost Teardrop Baby being just a bunch of cells or tissue, we know that they were our potential son or daughter and we will grieve for them with many tears. Another reason I call lost babes Teardrop Babies.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them. Psalm 139:16

It's not every day...

Over the last thirty years I have suffered from over fifty bi-lateral kidney stones. Sometimes after waiting agonising weeks, they would pass, but five times I required surgery to remove them.  At one time, I had surgery twice in a month. It is the most painful of pains and surgery.

At each occasion, no one seemed interested in finding out why I made them, and didn't send them off to be analysed. I was miserable and lived in fear of the onset of back pain which signalled a stone was coming. Of course, being in traction for my back two weeks at a time didn't help matters. I always seemed to get a stone after being in hospital.

Fed up, after passing a charming 6mm jagged stone, I changed doctors and at last I found one who was curious to know why I kept making them. He kept the stone I showed him and sent it off for analysis. But better yet, he sent me to see a kidney specialist who was at the time associated with our local hospital in Dandenong.

The renal specialist was Margot McIver, a very approachable older lady, who became a pioneer in renal medicine in Australia.  Margot spent a lot of the consultation questioning me about my health. She was interested that I had an identical twin. Then she noticed my maiden name,  her interest was piqued. 

Chalkley was a name that rang a bell with her. In her training days at the Queen Victoria Hospital Melbourne, she was treating my mother during our birth. Mum had pre-eclampsia and uterine inertia plus a bad kidney infection. She remembered our hurried delivery by high forceps- we were lying transverse and were both breech. She said she was in the observation gallery for trainee doctors and remembered it well. She said our birth was complicated and she learned a lot from her teacher doctor.

Margot was the only doctor ever to offer condolences for the still born twin girls I had given birth to in 1969 and to venture an opinion on the cause of their death in utero. Her opinion was an untreated kidney infection took their lives. Very common in multiple pregnancies, she said.

She had me do many blood tests and 24 hour samples of urine and later went on to diagnose me with calcium oxylate stones in uric acid. I was given allopurinol to reduce the uric acid in my blood and so give the calcium oxylate nothing to bind with. I have had no stones since taking it....

I was sad to read of her death in Queensland in 2012 at age 78 . She would have been the same age as my mother...

Margot will always be remembered for her compassionate and caring manner as well as medical expertise. I was amazed that I got to meet the doctor who looked after my mother and watched my birth at the training hospital. She touched me lightly on the arm as she said goodbye at my last visit and voiced what I had been thinking, "It was lovely to meet you: who would have thought?... it's not every day...!" 

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

 So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom.  Psalm 90:12

Blessed beyond measure!

Time goes by so fast: I have just held my first newborn great-grandchild Evie, and she took me back to when I first held her mother Sarah, my first grandchild. She looked so like her that it took my breath away in a sigh of delight, sadness, nostalgia and love.

I was there beside my Sarah's mother when she gave birth to her. Indeed, she owes her life to me being interested in midwifery, for I was her mother's advocate when she started bleeding at ten weeks. In the hospital, the doctors concluded that Sarah was miscarried without even doing an ultrasound. They planned a D & C for the next morning.

Asking if there was much dilatation, they said no so I asked if they had done an ultrasound. They replied there was no need as they were sure there was no baby there. I asked them to do one before the scheduled surgery just to be sure. And sure enough, there was a healthy ten week old fetus!

To this day, we believe my first grandchild was a twin which was miscarried, as I am a twin, I had still-born twins and twins were in both sides of the family. But sad as potentially losing a twin was, we rejoice that we have Sarah and that I demanded they check with an ultrasound. They were so cavalier about it and would have technically aborted her.

A few months later I had the joy of acting as doula to her mother and my granddaughter's little features were etched permanently in my mind. Sarah was after all, a female carbon copy of my own first child, her father.

Seeing little Evie's face for the first time was a total spin out! A mixture of delight, sadness, nostalgia and love, as I said. Delight too that I was at last a great-grandmother after two years of infertility for Sarah, sadness that the time has gone so quickly, and love for this baby who shared a comic resemblance to those other sweet babies of my past.

As I lifted Evie up onto my shoulder, I whispered a prayer of thanks to God and of welcome to our family, in her ear, just as I had done for my own babies and theirs. God is so wonderful! I am blessed beyond measure! 

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers. Proverbs 17:6