This I Believe

The Catholic priest who married me and my husband five years ago asked us to accept the blessing of children. It wasn’t a question of ‘if’ for him but simply a question of ‘when.’

Since then, I’ve watched helplessly as four dead babies bled from my body, and I’ve had another taken from me on a cold operating table. So here’s what I believe:

I believe babies are an astounding gift, too often treated as a given. And I believe we put relationships between friends, families and lovers at risk when we treat infertility and miscarriage as taboo topics, cloaked in shame and secrecy.

I’ve heard the same invocation our priest gave repeated at countless weddings since. Only once have I heard a pastor counsel a marrying couple that they might not realize their dreams of biological children. He asked them to be open to adoption.

“How enlightened,” I thought. How unusual, it turns out.

More common is the reaction I got after my third miscarriage from an otherwise intelligent person. “Don’t worry,” she said with unfounded confidence. “They can make anyone pregnant.”

The truth is, despite significant advances in infertility treatments and reproductive medicine, doctors can’t prevent every miscarriage. They can’t make every woman pregnant. Age and biological flukes prohibit some couples from conceiving. Chromosomal incompatibilities hinder others. Some couples, like my husband and I, baffle doctors and defy diagnosis.

One in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage and about 10 percent of couples cannot conceive after a year of trying. So why didn’t I know anyone beforehand who had experienced such loss and frustration?

I had our first miscarriage shortly after we married. The loss was devastating, the sadness crushing. We sobbed in shock and despair as our baby — our hopes — spilled out on the bathroom floor.

With four more losses, my marriage has been tested, so too my faith in God. My relationships with family members have also strained under the intensity and anguish of my struggle to start a family.

Throughout it all, what angers me most is that the sadness didn’t have to be so intense. The trauma didn’t have to be borne in isolation.

Families talk openly about cancer and Alzheimer’s, depression and mental illness. Why not infertility? I’ve found that even doctors are pretty bad at telling me the baby I see on the ultrasound is dead.

A year and a half ago, my husband and I celebrated the birth of our daughter. Doctors can’t tell us why her pregnancy clicked. They don’t know why we’ve suffered more miscarriages since.

But I’m even more convinced now that people should talk about the loss of their babies in tones louder than hushed whispers. Friends, families, coworkers should know about the lost babies as well as the healthy newborns.

I believe families should be prepared for loss. I believe they should be humbled by life.