Ask the Blog Team: How Has the Death of Your Baby Affected Your Identity and Your Connection to Your Body?

Welcome to our Q+A series, Ask the Blog Team. In this series, the Hope Mommies blog team joins together to answer questions that are commonly asked in grief. If there is a question or topic that you have wrestled with in your grief that you would like the opportunity to see how other Hope Moms have processed or answered, we would love to hear from you. You can submit your questions here.

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I think the suffering I experienced in becoming a Hope Mommy has been the most life altering and sanctifying gift the Lord has given me. I’ve found a new sense of identity in Him, knowing I’m safe and secure simply because of His identity: trustworthy and righteous. It has helped me become self-reflective and more in control of my feelings, intentions, and thoughts. And it has helped me connect to the Lord through prayer like never before.

This is a complicated question for me, because there are so many conflicting feelings. After my daughter died, I asked myself, “Am I a mother, or not?” I knew I was a mother in my heart, but there was no earthly proof. It also shook my worldview in such a profound way and caused my priorities to shift, which made me even more unsure about my identity.

I had to focus on who I was as a daughter of God. That was the foundation that held true no matter what. I ended up changing careers to something less stressful and more meaningful. Don’t be afraid for this experience to change other aspects of your life!

My body image was also complicated. Part of me was proud of being able to survive such a hard thing; after giving birth I felt so strong. But I was also angry with my body for failing my daughter. How could it let her die and me survive? But then I read Psalm 139:16. “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them he counts our days.” God allowed my body to sustain Ginny for all the days of her life and no more. It fulfilled God’s planned purpose for her life on earth. God used my body as a literal vessel for Ginny’s whole life on earth.

There are so many ways I want to answer this question. In some ways, I feel like I care less about vanity. For example, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I slathered oil on my belly and thighs every single night because I did not want stretch marks. Now, I do not mind the stretch marks and my c-section scar, because they remind me of her. 

Now, more importantly, I think my focus needs to remain off of my body and off of myself. When I lost two children back to back, I began thinking of myself like a victim– believing that my body failed my children. Why couldn’t I carry children like the moms around me? I have since fought the temptation to idolize self by focusing on all the things I can’t do (and even worse, all the things I can). Instead, when I want to lament the fact that I have scars and loose skin, or lament the fact that my body seems to struggle with the end of pregnancy, I look to Christ. I am not enough, but He is, so again, I should take my eyes off myself and look to the One who has created me and saved me for His glory and good pleasure.

The death of my baby and babies has drastically affected my identity and my connection to my body. I imagine it’s complex for many of us. I have found awe at my body in being able to get pregnant, frustrated that it couldn’t stay pregnant with the miscarriages, and fearful of how my body may have been connected to the death of our child born at 30 weeks. I have felt betrayed by my body, frustrated and hurt, and even angry.

I have felt hopeful as well, and grateful to have experienced pregnancy and the mystery and beauty that it entails. However, in my grief, I’ve mostly felt very disconnected from my body, unable to trust it, especially during subsequent pregnancies after our losses.

Yes, I believe my identity is in being a daughter of the King. However, my identity as a mother was greatly challenged. How does one be a mother to a child who has died? My losses challenged my identity to a level I had never experienced, and it was honestly earth-shattering for me. I am still learning to pick up the pieces, acknowledge the pain that was caused, and consider how I can still be the essence of myself even with these losses. I am still learning, and it is slow. I am, and always will be, a mama to the babies I’ve lost. I’ve only recently been able to say out loud, almost six years after my first loss, that my first baby, Isaac, is the one who made me a mom and changed my identity forever – to say that without only feeling pain.

My first three pregnancies were nearly storybook perfect. I truly loved and cherished every moment of them. I thought being pregnant was the most magical feeling in the world, and to be honest, I felt invincible.
But that all changed when our fourth baby passed away inside my womb during the second trimester.

I was told that it was “just a fluke.” There was no reason to suspect that I would miscarry again. After all, I was young and healthy, and my body had already demonstrated that it was very capable of carrying pregnancies to term. But then it happened again. The circumstances of our second loss were almost identical to the first. Without any warning, and for no apparent reason, another precious baby had died within me.

Having twice cradled death within my womb, I was left feeling so broken and dirty. My body had failed me. It had failed my babies. I felt so disconnected from my body when I had once felt so confident in it. Where I was once proud of how “well” my first pregnancies had gone, I was now ashamed at how completely they were really out of my control.

I was struck by how deeply I had rooted my identity in how “successfully” I had grown my family instead of being solely grounded in my identity in Christ. In my grief, the Lord gently guided my heart to a place of humility. I surrendered the intertwining and yet warring feelings of pride and shame to Him, and began resting in His perfect plan for me. Walking through the death of my babies reminded my heart that pregnancy is a gift, not an accomplishment.

Death may have robbed me of two precious babies and unraveled my plan for growing my family, but it had not thwarted God’s purposes (Job 42:2). By anchoring my identity in my unshakeable God, I would never be put to shame (Romans 10:11). I learned to be thankful for what God has strengthened my body to be able to do, while remaining rooted in the marvelous truth that my identity is secure in Christ.

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