Meet Julia and her family. Julia is married to Eric's cousin Luke. She has always been very open about her miscarriages and offered much needed support to Eric and I after losing Ian. Read her story below:
Hi! My name is Julia
Thoele. I am happily married to Luke and a stay-at-home mother to Alice (3.5
years) and Annemarie (3.5 months). We
have two little saints watching over us from heaven, Rose and John. We reside in Bloomington, IL.
Alice was conceived right after we were wed in June 2011. We welcomed her home and lived happily ever
after. Because things had gone according
to our “plan,” fertility issues weren’t part of our lives.
Once Alice was about a year and half, we wanted to actively
try for more. We were- and are- using
Natural Family Planning. Rose was
conceived and we were ecstatic to be welcoming another baby into our family.
Friday, January 24, 2014 started out like any other
day. We got up, had breakfast, and Alice
and I spent all morning cooking in the kitchen.
Around 10 AM I went to the bathroom and noticed blood. I had been feeling great so this surprised
and worried me. I called Luke, a few
friends for reassurance, put my feet up in the recliner, and said a few prayers. I thought maybe the blood was from being on
my feet all morning. This couldn’t
really be happening to me.
I got up intermittently over the next couple hours and every
time the bleeding was heavier. I called
my OB and made an appointment for 3 PM that afternoon. Luke came home to take me.
We sat in the waiting room with heavy hearts. When it was our turn for the ultrasound, we
saw a six-week-old baby but no heartbeat.
We were completely devastated. We
headed straight for our church and prayed for a while in the Adoration
chapel. We knew we didn’t have the
answers, but He did. I felt like I
needed to be home, so we left. My parents
were at our house when we arrived, which was such a blessing. (They has already scheduled this trip and
this was just another little way God’s grace was filling the day.) They watched Alice while Luke and I went to
our bedroom. Just a few minutes after we
had been home, I felt a strange wave come over me. I went to the bathroom and gave birth to our
Rose Francis Thoele. I scooped her tiny
body up and held her in my hand. Luke
and I held each other and cried. It was
an absolutely surreal moment.
Since our friends had experienced this before and shared
with us how they buried their baby, we knew we wanted to do the same. We found a small box and numbly called the
funeral home. They were so beautiful and
treated us with great respect in grieving our little girl. We made arrangements with our priest and the
funeral home to have a graveside service a few days later.
We were blessed to hold her little body and bury her a few
days later. It was a very surreal
experience that reminded us of how truly precious each life is, from conception
to natural death.
Below is a picture of a 6 week old baby and Rose’s headstone.
We
found out in May 2014 that we were expecting our third child! Praise be to God. There were no signs of anything going wrong,
so we were very shocked when at the 10 week ultrasound there again was a baby
but no heartbeat.
The
doctor said I could have two weeks to deliver myself and if nothing happened
they would schedule a d & c to deliver the baby. Because I had been through this before, I
much preferred delivering on my own to a surgery. A week and a half later I start hemorrhaging,
went to the ER, and had to have an emergency d & c. My advice to anyone in this situation: go to
the ER as soon as you suspect something because I waited too long, lost too
much blood, and it was a scary experience.
I
had the d & c at St. Anthony’s Memorial Hospital in Effingham, IL. They have a very beautiful program that
supports the grieving parents and buries the baby for you at a community
plot. While we couldn’t put our own
headstone on John’s gravesite, they left a temporary marker so we will always
know.
They
did a test on John see if there were any chromosomal abnormalities and there
were not. Within that testing, they were
able to confirm that our John Paul was a boy!
(Good thing, since we already named him John Paul.)
Now
not only were we so sad to lose our two babies, but we were scared for our
fertility. Was there something
wrong? We sought out Dr. Jillian
Stallings, an NFP-only OB, in Peoria, IL and also a Creighton (a different form
of NFP from the one we were using previously) teacher. We charted for months and everything looked
healthy. We have no answers as to why
this happened. I’m still trying to be ok
with that. He knows and that has to be
enough.
We
tried again and conceived our fourth, Annemarie Elizabeth! Her pregnancy went well and she is now a
joyful, full-of-smiles, precious baby girl whom we cherish every day.
-----------
Rose and John will always be Alice’s little sister and
brother. Annemarie will hear about them and look through their books. We will ask them to watch over us from
heaven. I encourage you to talk about
your babies. Name them.
If your family has lost a child as well, I recommend reading
the chapter titled “Miscarriage” in Kimberly Hahn’s book “A Life Giving Love”
and the book “After Miscarriage” by Karen Edmisten (a very short and VERY
worthwhile read). I have also created
little scrapbooks for each of them. I
wrote stories about their short time on earth, how we were able to see God’s
hand in each of their passings, pictures of their gravestones, how they got
their names, prayer cards people gave us, and more.
Miscarriage is too often glossed over, but it is a
devastating loss of life. We have great
confidence Rose and John are in heaven with Jesus but we still miss them. We are so sorry if you too have experienced a
loss in this way and we are praying for your family.
You are welcome to contact me at juliathoele@gmail.com
God bless,
Julia
Julia
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