How can my Marriage Survive the Death of my Child?

Even though our child’s death was a still-birth, our marriage took a hit that I was not expecting.

The pronouncement of my child’s death took place at a regularly scheduled Doctor’s appointment. When they could not find his heartbeat, I was sent directly to ultrasound where they confirmed it. They asked if I wanted to go back to my Doctor's office, but I could not bear the thought of walking back past all of those eyes as I tried to control the raging emotions welling up within me. All I could think about was getting to my husband. “He will know what to do.” I thought as I stumbled to my car and drove, unbreathing, the short distance to my home.

He was already late for his second-shift job at the hospital due to the added time it took for the ultrasound, and was in the kitchen collecting his keys with my 1 and 3 year old children playing around his feet when I arrived.

“My baby is dead!” I blurted out abruptly as I stepped through the door.

The following moments are a blur in my mind as he quizzed me on what had happened, cancelled work, called my doctor, made arrangements for our small children and drove me back to the doctor’s office.

It was a Wednesday and she suggested an immediate induction. I wanted time to process what was happening, and was in complete denial that it could really be true. I could not bear the thought of proceeding with an induction, only to find that the baby had not, in fact, been dead at all – but that the premature birth had killed him!

She needed to make sure that she had the proper staff in our tiny hospital to handle the situation and could not guarantee it over the weekend, so an appointment was made for Monday morning.

I went home to bide my time, feeling as though my body were a tomb. I put away my maternity clothes and squeezed into the most loose-fitting ordinary clothing I could find because I did not want anyone to see me and ask, “When is your baby due?” or any of the other kind bits of conversation about pregnant bellies that friendly, small-town folks make. I stayed home as much as possible.

My husband had called our church and they gathered around us.  It seemed to me that the year had been characterized by childhood death among our circle of friends. Only a year earlier, one friend had given birth to a child who only lived a few hours due to a serious medical condition. Another had lost a young infant to SIDS not even a month before our own loss.
Losing a child is the most devastating experience a mother can face.
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I spent those days crying, talking to other grief stricken mothers, and typing out my thoughts as tears rained down on my keyboard and overwhelming emotions constricted my throat.

My husband remained calm.

My husband is incredibly stoic. I have heard from his family that he helped to plan the funeral for his grandmother when he was only 16 because all of the adults were still reeling from her sudden death and struggling with the number of details that must be attended to.

Even though thousands of years have passed since the days in Athens where Zeno taught stoicism  – the philosophy that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity with calm, austere fortitude – many men, even to this day, gravitate toward this style of living. [1]

Women don’t understand it. To us, it looks uncaring.

And that is what I thought.

He seemed placid and unaffected. Every time I tried to talk about it, he changed the subject. I began to resent his passivity, and even felt fiercely protective of my child against his own father.

I went in on Monday for the induction. My mother came with me and stayed until the end. My mother in law stayed with my children at home. My husband went back and forth between the two places. Though I typically do not use medication in my deliveries, he instructed the hospital staff that I was to have whatever pain medication that they could give me – I was suffering enough with the emotional pain, he said, and he did not want me to have to feel the induction as well. After a very long day, Caleb was born about 1:00am on Tuesday.

We as mothers are in love with our babies just as soon as we learn that we are pregnant, but fathers often need a bit more time. This was his moment. He looked down at our tiny, lifeless boy and commented on how much he looked like one of our other children. He was a person, complete and whole, and his life had as much value as the lives of any of our other children. My husband was in love now, too.

He changed his mind about not having a funeral, and began planning a small, respectful service just with family and friends.

Our pastor came to plan the details of the service, then he closed his notebook and set it aside. “Now I want to talk to you about something else,” he said, and proceeded to explain the differences in the way that men and women grieve.
Christopher Skinner is seen in this undated photo. The 27-year-old was attacked, then run over by a group of men in an SUV early on Oct. 18, 2009 near Adelaide and Victoria.
photo credit

He told us that men handle issues in life more like a filing cabinet. They take out one file at a time and tend to it, then put it away and take out another file. They do not get out multiple files and look at all of them at once. When they are eating, they are not thinking about something else. When they are watching TV, they are simply watching TV. “Grief is hard for men because they cannot fix it. They tend to put that file away in the back of the drawer and leave it there as much as possible, hoping never to have to take it out and look at it.
"Women are more like a desk top. Multiple projects can be out at once – things to deal with now, things to deal with later… A woman can be working on something and glance up and see something else and her mind will immediately go to that thing as well. A woman can be washing dishes and thinking about a conversation she had a few days ago. She can be watching TV, and planning her next day’s itinerary. A grieving woman can be working away at something, or experiencing a moment of joy, then suddenly something will remind her of her grief and she will be overcome with sorrow in that instant.

Then our pastor turned to my husband and said. “It is important that you do the hard work of grieving with your wife.”

Then He turned to me. “Your husband cannot handle all of your grief. It is important that you find other people to grieve with, as well.”

After this conversation, everything changed. My husband did not change the subject every time it came up anymore, and I called my friends when I was feeling emotional, and gave him the freedom not to have to talk about it all of the time. All of my resentment melted away.

During that time, I began attending a support group for grieving parents that the hospital recommended. It was agonizing to listen to each of them share their grief. It did not take me long to see that there was a strong under currant of bitterness among many of them.

The topic for the Father’s Day meeting was about how fathers grieve. I listened as one, then another woman expressed the same resentment I’d had toward my own husband. One of them angrily announced that he could not possibly care about their child!

Suddenly, I felt compelled to share what our pastor had told us. A quiet thoughtful mood came over the group as they processed this information. More than one person expressed their gratitude for this enlightenment. I did not attend the group much longer, but I’ve always thought that, despite the fact that I hated those meetings, this one, especially, was God’s divine appointment for me that day.

It has been nearly ten years since the death of our son. Though I still cry when I read There’s a Party in Heaven to my little kids, for the most part, the pain is gone.

 I have long since accepted the possibility that the sole purpose for my son’s death was for YOUR benefit. If you have gained any help or comfort from my experience, then my tiny son’s short life is still fulfilling the purpose for which he was created.


“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the suffering of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-6




[1] American College Dictionary, 1947

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