Ghost babies
TLC won’t be changing the name of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s reality show, 19 Kids and Counting, any time soon. But, even without the circus of so many children and a reality show, miscarriage can be heartbreaking.
I’ve gotta be honest with you, she was kind of annoying.
She was short and solidly built with wide shoulders and a boy’s haircut. Were you to stick her in a leotard, you could have mistaken her for Mary Lou Retton–for those of you old enough to grasp such a reference. She was loud, brash, and opinionated. She talked too much. She spilled all of her business to everybody. She had strong personal views and refused to hear ideas that differed from hers.
Her name was Rachel, and she was my next door neighbor.
My new husband and I, our first child comfortably resting in my womb, had just moved to Hawaii so that he could repair helicopters for the Navy at a small base on the very edge of Kauai. I was twenty and hadn’t the first clue how to be a wife, let alone a mother. I was lonely, I was clueless, and, without any friends or family to lean on, I was working without a net.
After only a week or so, Rachel came along. She knocked on the front door of our on-base housing duplex, a plate of Christmas cookies in hand. As I opened the door, she just sort of pushed her way into the house, using the cookie plate as a kind of battering ram. Next thing I knew, she was sitting on my couch, the plate of cookies resting on her knees, introducing herself by telling me her life story. I never got a word in edge-wise, and after what seemed like forever she pushed her way back out saying “Well, I left my daughter home taking a nap, guess I’d better see if she’s up yet.”
There was something about her that just rubbed me the wrong way. I vowed to try to avoid her, fearing that any future interaction would be just as unbearable as the first.
Turned out that was impossible, as our husbands had met at work that same day, and hit it off. That, and their home’s immediate proximity to ours, meant we were destined to spend much time together. And we did. Always while she bullied conversations, using her definite opinions and ability to speak more loudly than anyone I’d ever met.
But Rachel had a secret. And, one night after having a few drinks, she asked me to hold it.
The six of us (by then, the baby that had been comfortably resting in my womb had burst forth, making himself known as my son) were sitting on the beach that served as our back yard (true story, walk out our back door and there was beach), when Rachel said that we should go put warmer clothes on the kids. Ugh, alone time with her was the worst. No conversation buffers. She suggested we put the kids in her daughter’s playpen, because she wanted to show me something in her bedroom.
My first thought was “She’s a lesbian, and she’s in love with me” because, honestly, I’ve seen too many dirty movies and this was exactly how they went down. She told me to sit on the bed and started digging in her closet, while I frantically considered ways to tell her I just wasn’t that into her. She dug a shoebox from way in the back and turned to me, looking grim. I realized that the box did not contain kinky sex toys and lubricants at about the same time that I saw tears in her eyes. She sat on the bed next to me and opened the box.
Inside were two small receiving blankets and two tiny caps, the kind they put on newborns in hospitals. Nestled in with all the softness was a faded Polaroid photograph of a pair of the tiniest babies I’d ever seen.
“These are my babies,” she said.
Rachel told me the story of her twins, which she’d miscarried at five months gestation ten years earlier. She cried as she told me about how excited she’d been to learn that she was pregnant and the heartbreak of learning they were gone. All she had left was in the shoebox.
Then, Rachel’s husband, a taller male version of Rachel herself, burst in the room.
“Hey, what are you guys doing in here?” He saw the box, then said “Jesus, Rachel, not again! Put that thing away!”
She stashed the shoebox back in the closet, quickly, wiped her face, and went on as if nothing had happened. She never mentioned the twins again.
— ∮∮∮ —
Last week Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, they of 19 Kids and Counting (both the fact and the TLC reality show), found out that their 20th child had passed away in utero. At a routine ultrasound appointment, which they expected would reveal the sex of the baby, the doctor was unable to find a heartbeat and it was determined that a miscarriage had occurred.
For those of you who don’t know, assuming you exist, The Duggars are devout Baptists and members of the Quiverfull movement, a Christian group that advocates having as many children as God gives them. They home-school all of their children and say that they live debt-free (I’m sure having a television series doesn’t hurt). They have always said that each child is a blessing and they would never try to avoid having more.
In the story, as reported by People.com, Michelle described what it was like to come home, after learning the sad news:
”I feel like my heart broke telling my children,” says Michelle. “They have all been so excited about this baby and looking forward to April coming around and having a new little one in our arms. That was the most difficult. The Lord is the giver of life and he can choose when that life is ready to go on and be with Him.”
The Duggars’ last child (number 19, named Josie), was born three months early by emergency c-section, weighing in at 1 lb, 6 oz, after Michelle was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a pregnancy-related condition which causes dangerously high blood pressure in the mother. Two years later, she still has significant health problems related to being born so prematurely.
So, like living and breathing, this latest miscarriage (Michelle’s second pregnancy ended in miscarriage as well, putting them right in line with the estimate that 10-25% of clinically-recognized pregnancies–meaning the stick has been peed on–end in miscarriage) has opened the Duggars up to plenty of armchair womb-quarterbacking by people who’ve never met them. After all Michelle is 45, well-beyond a woman’s ideal age for having a healthy child. As the news reported their sorrow, the world’s collective head nodded, knowingly.
But, whether you agree with the Duggars’ religious lifestyle, and reproductive choices or not, I think we can all agree that the loss of a child is a pain we wouldn’t wish on anyone.
— ∮∮∮ —
Rachel and Brian were transferred back to the mainland not long after that night. I felt relieved–in some ways–and hoped for quiet new neighbors, but I also felt sad for Rachel and the ghosts of her babies that she kept in a shoebox.
As for Michelle and Jim Bob, I’m not a godly superbreeder, but I’m lighting a candle for them, their two babies who didn’t make it, and for all the moms who’ve suffered a loss. I’ve seen, first hand, how the pain and emptiness can last for years.
Even if, like Rachel, you’re kind of a boor.
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The Checkout Girl
The Checkout Girl is Jennifer Lemons. She’s a storyteller, comedian, and musician. If you don’t see her sitting behind her laptop, check the streets of Richmond for a dark-haired girl with a big smile running very, very slowly.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
I love that you’ve written this. Miscarriage is a special kind of heartbreak.
I was saddened by some of the comments I saw on the Internet suggesting that the Duggars were somehow asking for this. The loss of a child is devastating, no matter what.
I liked this story.It seemed real,and well written. But 19 and counting,maybe they should quit counting,I know they love children,but mother nature doesn’t always know what is good for you,her children will have plenty of babies for them to love she needs to guard her health,they don’t need a dead wife, mother and grandmother.
Well written, but promotes the dangerous mythology associated with pregnancy that’s being used to assault women’s reproductive rights.
Miscarriages happen, romanticizing them leads to horrifying things like this woman’s little shoebox crypt and “personhood” legislation. Biological misadventure is a part of biology. Might as well write a poem about getting indigestion after a meal at Taco Bell.
Best article yet, J. And i agree with you on the armchair quarterbacking. Babies are about hope, excitement and anticipations, and when a baby dies, those aspirations pass away too. Nobody deserves that pain.
Very thoughtful and compassionate take on miscarriage. The unplanned end of a pregnancy should be recognized as difficult not only for those people whom we judge to be worthy of procreating, but also for those whose decisions and/or personalities don’t appeal to us. I’m sorry to hear of the Duggars’ loss and hope that Michelle’s health is ok. As for Rachel – how heartbreaking.
Fleshtone, I disagree that recognizing the impact of miscarriage is romanticizing it and contributing to the erosion of women’s reproductive rights. When a woman decides to become pregnant or decides to continue an unplanned pregnancy, she begins to make plans for her present and future that include her gestation and impending parenthood. Whether or not you identify a fetus as a legal “person”, whether or not you believe that “life” begins at conception, you cannot deny that many pregnancies are very wanted, and that the pregnant woman would mourn the loss of that pregnancy because she was hoping to have a baby. We can uphold the rights of women to terminate pregnancies and simultaneously recognize the impact of miscarriage.
I BELIEVE THAT HOW MANY CHILDREN THEY HAVE IS ENTIRELY THEIR BUSINESS. I DO QUESTION THE MORAL AND ETHICAL RESPONSIBILITY WHEN THEY ADMIT THAT ONCE THEY HAVE ONE CHILD THEY PASS THE OLD ONE OFF TO ANOTHER CHILD TO RAISE.THIS DOESN’T COME ACROSS TO ME AS EVEN ADEQUATE PARENTING SKILLS,BUT I WILL ADMIT THAT SO FAR THEY DON’T SEEM TO HAVE HAD A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH THEIR CHILDREN.THIS LIFESTYLE SEEMS TO WORK FOR THEM EVEN IF I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT.
Writing as someone who’s had a miscarriage, I’m with Jess on this one, while I acknowledge the point Fleshton’s trying to make. I may not think of the fetus-that-was-then-wasn’t as losing a child — I was never a parent, and there was never a child (in my mind) that was lost, because it was basically…unviable from the start. That said, there’s still grief, because as Jess rightly put it, there was the assumption that there *would* be a child, and that there *would* be a life built as a family with it. The loss of that *possibility* still causes grief when that future was very, very wanted. In short, you can be pro-choice, and still grieve over a miscarriage.
I think this was well-written and I appreciate the sentiment.
I’ve never had an early miscarriage. I won’t do those mothers the injustice of saying having an early miscarriage is different than having a later loss, or that their babies weren’t really babies.
My “fetus” died at 5 months gestation, and I had to sit in a hospital bed for 3 days and go into labor, hold my dead offspring and say goodbye, then go back to the home where just a few days ago, I’d been happily pregnant and preparing for my little girl’s arrival. It’s been over a year, and I still can’t think about it or talk about it without crying. Neither can my husband. At that gestational age, we were responsible for disposing of her remains, just as if she’d been born alive and died. Yes, we had a service, yes, we mourned, our families mourned, and we all still think of her.
For most spontaneous in-utero deaths after the first trimester, no explanation is ever found. No chromosomal abnormalities, no “incompatible with life” deformities, no traumas. If my baby had lived just a few more weeks and for whatever reason been born alive, even that early, she would’ve had a decent chance of surviving. She would have been, undeniably, a person.
I have to say that people who don’t think this is a real child or that it is not that BIG of a loss need to somewhere in thiet lives experience it themselves. I beleive karma comes around and you will have to look at how you treated other people in these situations. Religious or not religious if it grows and needs nutrients it is a living thing