Allow me to introduce myself...
My name is MacKenzie and I am a work at home mama. I own a small natural parenting company that aspires to teach other mamas how it is possible to parent naturally without having to be a hippie, and I am currently training to become a postpartum doula. I have one amazing little boy named Roman (who keeps me very busy), and one angel baby named Micah.
This past fall I became pregnant for the second time and although I was very excited I always had this lingering feeling that something just wasn't right. Nine weeks into the pregnancy I began to experience some bleeding and my midwife suggested I get an ultrasound to check on the baby's progress. Sadly, the ultrasound found the baby to be very small for his gestational age and to have a very slow heartbeat. Although the results were not definite, due to the position of my uterus and the margin of error inherently associated with ultrasounds, things did not look good. A series of blood work exams proved to give no more answers than the ultrasound and we were left to wait and wonder if our baby would survive.
The anguish that I felt the day of the ultrasound over the possible loss of my child was nearly unbearable. However, it gave me no choice but to turn to the Lord and place my baby's life in His hands. I clearly remember sitting down on my couch and whispering through my tears, "Jesus, take care of my baby." It was in that moment that I firmly believe my child went into the arms of my creator. I believe that the Lord was just waiting for me to let go and give Him complete control. I am glad that I can look back and associate a date with the passing of my child- November 16, 2007 will forever be his day.
Following that day I still had a lot of waiting and wondering ahead of me. Despite the feeling I had that the baby was gone, I still had to wait for the actual miscarriage to know for sure. It came 11 days later on November 27, 2007 at 4:30 in the afternoon. For the full story, please see my blog post that I wrote shortly after the event. We buried little Micah (that name came to me one night in my sleeplessness, I had always just known he was a boy) the following weekend on my in-laws property. My husband and I prayed and I sang him (or tried to through my tears) a Sarah Groves song I have always loved about being with Jesus in heaven. I am so grateful that I was able to give my son a burial and a name, it has greatly helped me in my healing process. I also plan to get a memorial tattoo on back for him just as soon as I can afford it (I want it done by Hannah Attchison- if you have ever watched LA Ink you will know what I am talking about).
The loss of my second child was really what opened my eyes to how little support there is for mothers dealing with a pregnancy loss and inspired me to become pregnancy loss doula as. I was very blessed to have the support of my family (especially my mom) and my wonderful doula who was there for the birth of my first son, however, as helpful as all of those people were, none of them had been through what I was going through. I had one friend who had experienced three miscarriages and she was a lovely support, however she was also 40 weeks pregnant at the time and so she could only be so much help. I found myself turning to online forums just to connect with other people in my shoes, and it was a great savior to me in that time, but how I would have loved to have had someone there the same way my doula was for the birth of my son. And so here I am- offering the services that I know I would have benefited from in my time of loss. In many ways it will probably be as healing for me as it will be for the mothers I help.
