Learning To Love The Valleys

I had felt an unusually hard movement at that time.  By morning I was convinced that something was drastically wrong.  By the time I got in to see the doctor it had been 24 hours since I felt any movement.  Although he couldn’t detect a fetal heartbeat, he believed the placenta was probably preventing such detection.  He sent me for x-rays and told me he would call me at home later that evening.  I already believed the baby was dead, but the obstetrician told my husband, on the phone that night, to keep me hopeful until delivery.  Due to my having had so many children, both my physicians agreed I must wait until the baby delivered naturally.  They were concerned that, emotionally, I could not handle knowing the baby had died, but my husband, as gently as possibly, told me the concerns of the doctors and why I had to carry the deceased baby until natural birth occurred.

 

As the days passed slowly, we did our best to prepare the children for the loss they too would suffer.  They, however, wouldn’t give up hope for eventually seeing their baby brother or sister.  Finally, on the evening of Mother’s Day, although I had been warned against doing anything to induce labor, I drank cod liver oil.  A month had been too long carrying a dead child.  I felt emotionally drained and physically worn and unable to carry the baby any longer.  It had been 10 months.

On May 11th, (the month devoted to the Blessed Mother) our daughter was stillborn, and named Mary Virginia for a dear friend of ours.  There was no apparent cause of death, and I was not given the opportunity to see her at all.  I was taken to share a room with a mother who had just delivered her first child, a little boy.  It was not comfortable for either of us as she felt guilty about showing her happiness, and I tried to conceal my sorrow.  I lay awake at night, quietly praying the Rosary, prayerfully seeking comfort.

My husband carried the tiny box containing Mary Virginia to her burial place in the cemetery.  A family friend and church representatives accompanied him.  The evening before I was to go home, the nurse who had been present at the stillbirth brought some tea to share with me.  As she sat to visit, she said, in her delightful Irish brogue, “What would you like to know?”  I cautiously asked what I had been wondering:  “What did she look like?”  I braced myself for the answer, because people had suggested that the baby would be deformed and infectious, etc.  As I took a sip from my teacup, the nurse quietly responded.

“She didn’t look like your other children.  This one was different.  You have always had beautiful babies, but this one absolutely looked like a perfect angel.  Her hair was very curly, yes, little ringlets; different than the others.  She had a very beautiful little face, with such round cheeks.  She looked like an angel.  I wish you could have seen her!  So beautiful….so angelic….”

Our family prayed together and packed away the baby clothes and cradle.  We were grieving as best we could, but didn’t seem able to recover from our loss as a family, or as individuals.  The doctors had warned me that I should never take the chance of pregnancy again.  They predicted that my uterus would rupture, that no baby could survive nine months, and that I would probably not survive.  We eventually had a Mass of The Angels in our home when our pastor and associate pastor concelebrated with us the brief life of the family member we had never seen or held.  The sadness, however, continued to hang over our home for many months.  The children drew pictures and wrote notes to my husband and me expressing their sadness.  It was a heartbreaking time, a deep valley.

Finally, I convinced my husband that I believed we were meant to have another child.  We prayed and prayed about it, and it was the only thought that brought us a feeling of pure peace.  We were a family that prayed the Rosary each evening, and believed in the prayerful intercession of Our Blessed Mother.  We increased our prayers when we learned that I was pregnant.  The baby was expected to be born in November.

The physicians were disappointed, but committed themselves to helping me through the pregnancy.  It was not a healthy time for me, and I spent most of the time prescribed to bed rest.  It was also a fearful time for all of us, but we prayed in faith for this child.

All of our children had been born two or three weeks after their due dates.  I knew that would be the most difficult time of this pregnancy:  the waiting beyond the due date.  Even though this baby was very active, moving constantly, our fears were always present.  We increased our prayerful requests for the Blessed Mother’s intercession until three weeks before the due date when I began early labor and hemorrhaging.  In the delivery room, I was told the baby had turned into breach position, and the birth would be extremely difficult.  It was painful indeed, as our daughter slowly entered the world in a sitting position.

She was whisked away without me seeing her but I heard her crying.  It wasn’t long before a nurse returned to the room.  As my husband stood beside me, the Irish nurse came into the room and presented our ninth child to us.  I could do nothing but stare, speechless, at this little girl who looked very different than all our other children.  I saw the ringlets of her curly hair and the pretty tiny face with very round cheeks.  “She looks like an angel!”  My husband exclaimed.  “She really looks like an angel!”  As the nurse stood back, smiling, the doctor came into the room.  “What do you think of this little angel?”  He asked happily.

Everyone who came to see her called her an angel, and many said she looked like pictures of Renaissance angels.  We named her Rosemary, because she had come to us early, on October 7th, The Feast of Our Lady of The Rosary.