It was the second trimester of my third pregnancy—and I had just started spotting.
This pregnancy had been a challenging one from the start. Just before finding out that I was pregnant, I suffered a bad cycling accident. Because of this, I took an X-ray as well as strong pain medication, both of which were harmful for pregnant women. After recovering from the accident, I contracted Covid, followed by a slew of other illnesses that my toddler brought home from preschool.
My body seemed to be failing my unborn baby at every turn. And now, the spotting.
In the short time I had before heading to the hospital, I listened to Ellie Holcomb’s song “Do Not Worry” and quickly typed a letter to my unborn child:
“My dearest baby, it was so difficult these few months when you were in Mama’s tummy, but it was still a privilege to house you. There were so many twists and turns along the way, but God who sovereignly gives lives gave you to us, as with every beat of your heart. Who knows whether you live or die? We don’t know yet, but He knows and He will hold you fast, till we meet on earth or in heaven.”
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God Gives Life
I was eventually diagnosed with a threatened miscarriage and placed on hormone therapy. My gynaecologist also instructed me to take plenty of precautions and reduce my movements to the bare minimum.
The spotting stopped after a while, but the threat of losing my baby loomed large. The baby was measuring very small (around the 15-percentile marker) and did not seem to be growing despite my best efforts to eat more, as my gynaecologist had advised.
Yet, all glory be to God—the baby survived and is now a walking tot. We named her Talitha, the way Jesus greeted the little girl whom He raised to life (Mark 5:41). This was after He healed the woman who, like me, suffered from bleeding.
The name Talitha was also apt, as it means “little girl” in Aramaic, and our daughter measured so small in utero. God truly surprised us by enabling her to grow well, past the 97-percentile marker once she was born.
God Takes Life
By God’s grace, Talitha’s story had a happy ending. This was unlike my very first pregnancy, which had ended abruptly in miscarriage. Back then, I naïvely thought that I would sail through pregnancy and took it for granted that my child would live.
When God took my child away, I was devastated. Countless nights were spent crying myself to sleep, missing my unborn child and wondering if I would ever have the chance to become a mother.
Miscarriage felt like I had let my baby down, especially when others suggested that it could have been something I had done (or had not done). I also took little solace in consolations citing how common miscarriage was, as though I should not grieve just because many others had also experienced the same.
God Sends Help
Thankfully, God led my husband and a few treasured friends to simply sit with me in the pain, and to worship Him in the midst of sorrow. Even an acquaintance who did not know about my miscarriage said he felt led by God to share a song with me during that period, which comforted me and reminded me of God’s presence with me through my pain.
God led my husband and a few treasured friends to simply sit with me in the pain, and to worship Him in the midst of sorrow.
Through that valley of death and barrenness, I held on tightly to Habakkuk 3:17, and prayed that Christ might revive my joyless heart.
Though the fig-tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the sheepfold
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.
By His grace, I went on to conceive twice more, first with my elder daughter and then with Talitha. Both times, it felt like I was holding my breath throughout, even well into the third trimesters. Yet, I was thankful for each week that passed, each scan that showed my babies alive and moving, and each day in which He continued to give me the privilege of carrying life.
I knew that it was God who sustained the life of my children, and that whether they lived or died, they were equally in His good hands. As Psalm 139:16 promises: “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
God Gives Growth
This same lesson remains relevant to me now, as a parent to two young girls.
When I first became pregnant, I was told that my body was responsible for keeping another alive—and that was when the rules began: Eat this, not that. Don’t move too much, but don’t be too sedentary.
The rules continued after my baby was born—about sleeping, breastfeeding, eating, drinking, pooping, and everything under the sun. Rules by relatives, doctors, aunties and uncles in the lift. The baby is too hot, too cold, too small, too big . . . everyone had an opinion.
Parents are told to ensure that we cover all our bases to keep our children safe. Not only is this impossible, such a belief prevents us from ever entering God’s rest.
This barrage of unsolicited comments grated on me as I tried to find my footing as a first-time mum. I lacked the confidence and maturity to simply thank others for their advice and move on. Instead, I obsessively researched evidence-based comebacks to justify my approach and choices in parenting.
After some time, however, I realised that society propagates the lie that parents are solely in charge of their child’s fate. Yet, this illusion of control is shattered when one considers that there are 1,001 ways a child could die: miscarriage, stillbirth, sudden infant death syndrome, accidents . . . the list goes on and on.
Parents are told to ensure that we cover all our bases to keep our children safe. Not only is this impossible, such a belief prevents us from ever entering God’s rest.
We can rest knowing that we have a Father, and that same Father is the Father of our children.
What a huge and needless weight it is to believe that we are solely responsible for the life of another! Conversely, what freedom is ours when we remember that we are first children of God before we are parents, as 1 John 3:1 reminds us:
“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
We can rest knowing that we have a Father, and that same Father is the Father of our children. He was the one who first breathed life into them, and is the one who sustains them each day.
While we ought to do our best to steward our children well, we would do well to remember that it is the Lord who gives growth.
Christ Our Only Comfort
In His loving wisdom, God is the one who decides whether our children live, grow, or die. Each day He gives them is a gift. While I was still grieving my miscarriage, I would marvel at the babies who made it past the first trimester, the second, the third, and then birth, infancy, and toddlerhood.
I adapted the excerpt below from the Heidelberg Catechism as a reminder to myself, as I parent my children:
Q. What is your only comfort in your children’s life and death?
A. That they are not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ. He preserves them in such a way that without the will of their heavenly Father not a hair can fall from their head. Indeed, all things must work together for their salvation.
Christ is their faithful Saviour—as He is mine. I am not my children’s Saviour and cannot save them from all of life’s pains. But I pray that every tear they cry may create in them a yearning for eternity. And each day they live, I will give thanks and work with Christ to help them know and love Him.
In life or death, they are His.
