A miscarriage is a loss that is hard to mark for many couples - some had not even shared the news before the loss occurred, leaving them the choice of either sharing both the pregnancy and the loss in the same breath, or of never sharing the loss at all. Some are able to mark the loss with a burial, a memorial service, or another physical marker of the loss - while others whose losses occur very early, such as ours, are left with no physical reminders of the baby who was lost.  Friends and family are often at a loss as to how to respond to and support those who have had a loss during pregnancy, birth or early infancy, and may not understand that a pregnancy known for even a few hours is a pregnancy valued and a child loved, and thus a loss to be mourned.  Yet support comes, as it has to us, in often surprising ways - an unexpected card, an email, a hug from someone I don’t even know at my parents’ church.  It comes from friends who have also lost babies, babies I never even knew existed, friends who choose to share their pain in hope of easing mine. It comes in the form of online friends with shared experiences, in the form of articles written by women who know my pain.

There are a few articles I’d like to share -  I know I’ve written on our loss, as has Michael-John, but it’s always good to hear it from another perspective.  This article  is from the New York Times on one woman’s experience with a loss. A second  looks at ways several women mourn their losses. This third, also from Mothering, is another woman’s experience. They are tough to read, but may give some insight into the process. They will hopefully give you more understanding of miscarriage, or help you remember you are not alone, as they have done for me. Most importantly, I hope they give you the courage to tell someone who’s had a loss, “I’m sorry.”

Thank you all again for your love and support, for your condolences and prayers. I/We rely on them, and will continue to as the months go on.

Our friend Anne, of the Watson Highlands, coaches an under-6 team just north of us in Michigan, and invited Michael to fill in for the rest of the season for a youngster who just couldn’t bring himself to stop wandering and actually play.  So here he is, in all his green-team glory (first pic: third from left; second pic: second from goal):

One rainy practice night we had a beautiful double rainbow (lighter one is above darker one)…

…and what I learned is that at the end of the rainbow is a soccer field!

If you look carefully at the end of each rainbow, it touches down onto the field.

Seriously, I’m asking for a soccer mom t-shirt for Christmas.

So here we are with a summary of our 8 weeks in tegucigalpa. It will probably span two posts since it’s so long. 

 – Jacob played with lots of playdough, painted with watercolors, and learned about shapes

– Maggie helped with the laundry

– Found a really big praying mantis on the back porch

– Enjoyed our big front porch    

– Found Jesus - Cristo del Picacho, to be more specific. This is the HUGE Jesus statue (in El Picacho national park) we could see from across the valley. Jacob was really impressed with how big his toe was.

I realized that in not finishing this massive post, I was precluding myself from posting on South Bend. So i’ll finish this one sometime later this month - well, at least by Christmas.

A little over three weeks ago, we found out that we were pregnant with our fourth child.  It came as quite a surprise, but we accepted the news with love and faith in God that he would continue to guide us. We weren’t sure if or how this changed our plans - we were already struggling with our life in Honduras for a variety of reasons, including safety/security and the abundance of travel Michael-John had begun with work. We were questioning the goodness of fit of the international lifestyle, with its many moves and changes and unpredictability, for our family.  Still, we trusted that God would guide us through the decision-making process as we tried to figure out the next steps for our family.

It was with great sadness, then, that we learned last week that we had lost the baby. We had only ‘been pregnant’ for 17 days, but already I/we loved this baby dearly. As we struggled to cope with both the short-term challenge and the long-term impact of this loss, and integrate it into our already-begun thought-process, it became clear to us that the best decision for our family was to return to the States. We returned to South Bend to seek care from a group of midwives, and to find support and love with our family and friends, both here in SB and across the US and the world. Michael-John returned to Honduras this morning to spend a month finishing up things in his office, and will return to us in a month so that our family may move forward.  We’ll start our journey with some time in South Bend, then most likely move onto Chicago - though the path our journey will take is known, as always, only by God.

I am grateful for those 17 days of joy, of being filled with another child, of knowing the beauty of pregnancy and the blessing of conception. I am awed to be a mother of four - for though this child has gone ahead of us to heaven, this child is still ours. I am saddened by our loss, and yet joyful for the knowledge that God continues to work in our lives in surprising and beautiful ways. 

Thank you for your love and support through this difficult time.  Thank you for the emails and phone calls, for sharing your stories, for the hugs, the thoughts and prayers. Thank you for saying, when you didn’t know what else to say, “We love you.” It’s hard to know what to say or to know how to grieve for a baby we never saw - but we do grieve, and cry, and wonder what this baby would have been like. And we thank you for being with us through this process. (Please know that the kids don’t know about any of this - and though we’ll tell them when they’re older, we appreciate you allowing us to share this experience with them in our own time.) We love you all.

* City of God, by Dan Schutte.

When I was in high school in the 90s, I was only allowed to watch Beverly Hills, 90210 in the company of my parents, who used the show as a vehicle for teaching morals and good decision making.  Their concern for my moral development, and rules about watching the show without their permission, indicate this this obviously is not a show for young kids - or even pre-teens. 

The fact that Bus Radio’s broadcasts and website promote shows such as 90210 and music by groups such as Bratz indicates a clear decision to prioritize advertising revenue above our children’s well-being - the same children who in 20 years, will take today’s lessons and put them into practice as they vote, raise families, and run our country.  Why not give them a better foundation and choose to advertise more appropriate products, music and shows?

We know that our children have a hard time making good decisions.  The fact that a national political figure’s 17 year old is pregnant shows that despite good parenting, our children and teens are still vulnerable to messages about sexuality from media and peers.  And she’s not alone - “each year, almost 750,000 teenage women aged 15–19 become pregnant.” 1  While teenage pregnancy is declining, it certainly has not disappeared.  Shows such as 90210 that promote promiscuity and precocious sexuality don’t help.

PLEASE help us. Help us teach our children to respect their sexuality. Help us teach our children good morals. Help us teach them to make good decisions. Help me limit my children’s exposure to shows and commercials that are not age-appropriate.

I hope you will see my letter, and the thousands of other letters that pour in, as a plea from America’s parents to raise our children with good values.

Sincerely,

Erika L. Myette, MSW
Mother of Michael (5), Jacob (2), and Maggie (9m)

1.  Guttmacher Institute, 2006.  (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/2006/09/12/USTPstats.pdf).

BusRadio, which hopes to “take targeted student marketing to the next level” by forcing children to listen to its commercialized radio broadcasts on school buses, has sunk to a new low. The company is advertising the highly sexualized new television show 90210 on BusRadio.com, its website for children as young as six. 
Tell Bus Radio: Stop promoting 90210 to six-year-olds.

BusRadio.com - the company’s website for students that  is promoted throughout BusRadio’s broadcasts on elementary, middle, and high buses - is urging children to tune in to tonight’s premiere of 90210, a show that the CW Network calls a “sexier” and “more provocative” update on the popular series from the nineties. [1]  A trailer for the show on the BusRadio website teases several sex scenes, while a banner ad featuring the stars of the show in sexualized poses links to the show’s website.[2] The show is exploiting preteens “currently smitten with Hannah Montana and the Jonas Bros” through merchandise such as backpacks, school supplies, and clothing.[3] Media reports also suggest the show will feature a significant amount of product placement.[4]
BusRadio sells itself to school districts as an age-appropriate alternative to FM radio, but the company’s definition of “age-appropriate” frequently differs from that of parents. Seminole County, Florida recently terminated their relationship with BusRadio when the company refused to stop playing songs from albums with parental warnings for explicit lyrics and content. Advertisers on BusRadio’s elementary school broadcasts include the highly sexualized Bratz brand. Another elementary school advertiser, Answers.com, tells students to do their homework by looking up their answers on the Internet and mocks a student for carrying around books. BusRadio broadcasts encourage young students to visit its BusRadio.com website where inappropriate media, including Mature-rated video games and now 90120, are promoted.
We believe no child should be held captive by BusRadio and we will continue to organize parents and educators around the country to keep advertising off of school buses. But we also think it is important to protect those students who are unfortunate enough to ride buses with BusRadio from this kind of sexualized advertising. 

 
Please visit http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/621/t/6914/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25409 to tell BusRadio to stop advertising 90210 to young children.
 
Thanks,
The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
www.commercialfreechildhood.org
 
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7EjzF1RJk.
[2] http://www.busradio.com/movies.
[3] http://commercialfreechildhood.org/news/2008/08/90210.htm.
[4] http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008/08/16/freetime/doc48a0c098adc53549467084.txt.

Michael attends the Discovery School here in Tegucigalpa, about 10 minutes from our house.  it’s a private school with small classes and fewer thatn 300 students in PreK-12th, and students who come from about 20-25 different countries with as many languages.  He gets picked up by his small bus (~10 students) by 730, starts at 8, goes until 3, and is home by 350.  It’s a long day but so far, so good.  Each week he has music 3x, P.E. 2x, library, art, Spanish 4x, lots of group activities, stories, snacks and playtime. He’s a big guy now who buys lunch in the cafeteria. His teacher Ms Gigi is Honduran and has been teaching at Discovery for 11 years.  She’s a mom of 4 boys, which seems to have well-prepared her for this year’s class of 8 boys and only 3 girls!

Here are some pics of the first few days of kinder (and Daddy’s 1st day, too):

 Michael and his buddy Mariano:

His classroom:

 Michael at the end of his first day of school:

 Michael’s bus driving away: