For the Love of Mercy

In which I get very real with you, dear audience.

Photo by Mon Petit Chou Photography on Unsplash

Warning: The following contains discussions of infertility, pregnancy loss, and grief.

As I said in my July State of the Library, I struggle with how much of my personal life to share online. However, as my husband and I made a journey no parents ever want to make, I realized that it was very, very important to me that the world know about this. Not to garner sympathy or social media clout. Not to push an agenda or take on a cause. Rather, I feel a desperate need for people to know that, once upon a time, there was a baby named Mercy…

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On July 1, for the first time in my life, I held a positive pregnancy test. The second line was so faint, I almost didn’t notice it. And then I thought I was imagining it. I asked Brad, “Do you see a second line?”

“Yep,” he replied.

I immediately took a second test, with the same result. One blood test later and I believed it: after years of longing, I was finally pregnant. I collapsed in front of my little shrine to the Sacred Heart in my office, sobbing a prayer of thanksgiving.

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Brad and I had just celebrated our fourteenth wedding anniversary. It was one year after we’d started our fertility journey with a NaPro¹ specialist whose unconventional methods caused as much frustration as they did hope. I walked out of my last in-person NaPro-centered visit so frustrated and unseen, I nearly quit.

It was at odds with how the NaPro experience was sold to me. I had been told that the doctor would get to the root of my problems and actually listen to me. That wasn’t always the case.

And, yet, despite the confusions and lack of explanations, and the fact that I had to be my own advocate at times, the NaPro doctor did something right. I finally did become pregnant. On top of that, we probably wouldn’t have gotten as far as we did in the pregnancy without her close monitoring and supplementation of my progesterone. For all the flaws, there was goodness there.

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We reveled in my pregnancy. The first time I had to hang my head over the toilet bowl as I dry heaved, my husband stood in the doorway and said, “But you’re having the time of your life, right?” I laughed through the nausea. That became our catchphrase. We were having the time of our lives, even when I yelped from the progesterone shots or when I was so tired, I could barely get through a day.

I was also paranoid about what I ate, what products I used, and even of the air I breathed. When our church had the pews refinished, I attended Mass elsewhere to avoid any chemicals in the air. My in-laws invited us to the water park, and I declined, partially because I wasn’t handling the heat well but mostly because I had no idea what microbes could be floating around in the water. (You know that strong chlorine smell is because people are peeing in the water, right?)

I dropped a small amount of weight because I was being more active and doing all the healthy food tips I’d only ever half-heartedly put in place before. I began putting together a baby registry. We talked about how we wanted the nursery to look. I bought a baby book and started writing in it.

Then, I noticed my breasts stopped growing. The soreness started to fade. My nausea was abating.

I thought maybe my chest would have another growth spurt. Or maybe my body was simply adjusting to the hormones. Was I going to have one of those unicorn pregnancies where everything goes amazingly well?

And then, on August 8, the whole world stopped.

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It was the day Tropical Storm Debby blew through. I was going to see my primary care Obstetrician, who was separate from my NaPro doctor. I had called the Obstetrician’s office twice in the days prior because I feared they would close last minute. But, no, they remained open, and we arrived for an early appointment. The office was a ghost town.

When the tech said she was confused by the dates on my chart, and left to get the doctor, I didn’t think anything of it. I thought she was just in a hurry to go home ahead of the storm and, in her hurry, misread my chart. I forgot the golden rule about techs: if they leave the room not-quite-running-but-moving-with-purpose, it’s time to worry.

My OB came in, looking grave. At first, I didn’t understand what she was talking about. What was a “missed ab”? I asked her what she was saying. She replied, “There is no heartbeat.”

I immediately broke down. In the brief glimpse I got of the baby, it looked like her back was to the ultrasound probe. I asked that they look again, that maybe we could hear it, even if we couldn’t see it. I looked at the tech, who was already putting the probe into the sterilizer. But the OB was firm: there was no life in my womb.

We made an appointment for a follow-up ultrasound and went home. As the rain came down, so did the tears. I was Rachel lifting up her voice in Ramah, weeping bitterly (Jer. 31:15).

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I would not have gotten through the next few days if it were not for my dear friends who also had experience with child loss. And my husband was also a rock, making sure there was still food to eat (even if we didn’t have an appetite) and looking into a place to bury our child.

We named her Mercy Ann. We never had her gender confirmed but we always felt that it was a girl. And a family member with a knack for gender prediction kept insisting that we were having a girl. There was also a certain poetry to using the name “Mercy”. It was the first name I suggested, at the very beginning, because I felt like God finally had mercy on us and answered our prayers.

Following advice from friends and websites, we gathered materials if Mercy made her appearance at home. Like all the other plans we had made, this, too, was thwarted, but in a good way, because Mercy was born, August 13, at the doctor’s office after my follow-up ultrasound. The nurses and the OB made sure we had our daughter’s tiny, fragile body so that we could have a burial. I will forever be grateful for their kindness and compassion.

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It’s most likely that little Mercy Ann had a problem with her chromosomes. The pregnancy, effectively, had been doomed from the start. No amount of medication or precaution would have helped her. In my research, I also learned that being over the age of 35 put me at greater risk for just this sort of defect.

I remember when I brought up my age to my NaPro doctor. She brushed off my concern, saying she didn’t worry until her patients were over the age of forty-two.

That memory makes me angry. No, there’s nothing that can be done about my age, but a little warning would have been nice. Maybe if I had felt a hint of caution, Mercy’s death wouldn’t have hurt so much.

Or maybe not. We’ll never know.

I also couldn’t help but replay my conversations with the NaPro doctor, and how well I followed her orders, a dozen times. I tried to see where I went wrong or where she went wrong. Was something missed? Sometimes, I was angry at myself for not trying harder to become pregnant sooner.

Eventually, I realized I was trying to find someone to blame and from whom I could gain a little justice. That was one of the harder parts of this, realizing there was no one to blame. Not even God. How can I be angry with the God who let me have Mercy, after all these years, even if it wasn’t His will that I could keep her?

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There is something weirdly comforting in planning a funeral. I dreaded the appointment, of course, as well as the inevitable moment when I would let go of my daughter’s physical remains. But once we were seated at the long, dark table, and began making plans, the pain in my chest eased slightly.

I have planned or assisted in planning several funerals. Each one was different, but the basic ritual of decisions remains the same. Even the rooms where I met with the funeral directors and pastors were all essentially the same in layout and atmosphere. Therefore, there was a strange familiarity as we discussed Mercy’s cremation and service.

We humans are creatures of habit and ritual. We are soul-and-body, not souls-that-wear-a-body-to-later-discard. When all the world is falling to pieces, and the night is especially dark, we latch onto the familiarity of ritual. Ritual engages the body and helps us move from one stage of the journey to the next.

I didn’t always understand what my body was doing during and after the miscarriage, and there were times it frightened me. But that meeting? Those decisions? Calling the priest to loop him in, and putting him on speaker phone? Oh, I knew this dance. I could play this song. And it was a comfort. It gave me something to grasp onto.

When we walked out of the funeral director’s office, we felt more assured of what came next. We had a plan. But that didn’t erase the ache in the deep pit of myself, because we weren’t just driving away from a building. Handing off that small specimen bottle containing Mercy’s tiny remains, and then driving away, was a final rending.

For weeks, I had carried her in some fashion, and then, suddenly, I was not.

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As news of what happened spread, women who I thought were of perfect health and age to have children told me about how they lost their babies. A silent community I had no idea existed gathered around me in shared grief.

But the service itself was small and private.

August in South Carolina is a hot, miserable, muggy affair. However, the day we laid Mercy’s ashes to rest was very warm but not that hot, and there wasn’t much humidity. In fact, it was a very nice, lovely day, with only a few white clouds scudding across the bright blue sky. It was the kind of day to visit a park or wander along a nature trail.

I wasn’t sure what the service would look like. The priest officiating confided this was the first time he had ever done this, but that he was going to do his best. It began with a blessing of a woman after the death of her child, followed by a solemn procession to the columbarium². Father emphasized the innocence of children in his brief talk before blessing my husband and me. Brad lowered Mercy’s ashes into the columbarium. And that was it.

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In the weeks that have followed, Brad and I struggle forward in our grief. We talked multiple times about what happened. We shared our doubts, but also our hopes. We hope to have another child. After taking a break for a couple of weeks, that has become another major intention in our evening prayer time together.

I wish I had a big, life-altering lesson to share with you, dear reader. Something that ties all of this into a neat package. But grief is not neat. It is messy and many-angled. It is a pain that burrows into the chest and makes a home there. And while it is a comfort that Mercy awaits me in Heaven, that thought also reminds me that I never got to know her here on Earth. And while it is nice to know that I can conceive, the questions remain, “Can I carry to term? Or will this happen again?”

I think about Mercy every day. The box containing the baby book and what few items we’d bought sits in a closet. One day, I’ll be able to take it out of the closet and perhaps make a shadow box to hang on the wall. That way, years from now and if God so blesses us, I can point to it and say to a child, “You have a sister in Heaven. Her name is Mercy Ann.”

1. NaPro is short for Naturally Procreative. It is a type of fertility medicine taught by the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, NE. The reason why Catholics need an alternative medicine is because we are not allowed to use IVF or artificial insemination, which are the go-to practices of mainstream fertility experts. NaPro doctors typically look outside the box when it comes to women’s reproductive issues.

2. Most Catholic cemeteries have a place set aside for miscarriages and stillbirths. At this particular cemetery, their allotted space is the central shaft of their columbarium. This is why Mercy was cremated. Her ashes were placed in a satin bag with her name and date of birth (August 13, 2024) embroidered on it.