Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. I’ve been cultivating a devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows since the beginning of Lent—on the day I found out our unborn baby didn’t have a heartbeat.

This was the second miscarriage in four months. This was the second pregnancy that I had desperately hoped would cover over the sadness and trauma of the birth of my son, Virgil, a year and a half ago.

“Virgilius Non-Natus” is a little inside-Catholic humor my husband and I use to refer to our beloved boy. And he is perfect in every way. But his birth wasn’t. Some people out there might not realize what this means to a mother.

“Healthy mom and baby is all that matters, right?”

Mothers who have gone through birth know that’s not exactly true. Not by a long shot. There is something I should have had with my son, that was taken from me, that I can never get back.

He was “Virgil, the non-born,” because the Covid pneumonia prevented my body from going into labor. I ended up doing what I never thought I would do, as a passionate, determined, even defiant natural-home-birther: I asked for a cesarean. Not because I was afraid to give birth, but because I was beginning doubt very much whether we would survive this illness. My oxygen was low. Pitocin was doing absolutely nothing to put my depleted body into labor…and I was beginning not to care. I just felt like going to sleep. I was beginning to fade away…and that was okay with me. That’s what got my attention.

There were other things too, like the fact that this took place during the Covid fiasco, and if I were to be transferred to another hospital, which the palpably nervous labor and delivery staff were itching to do, I was definitely going to be separated from my husband.

“So, let me get this strait,” I remember saying.

“If I elect for a C-section right now, my husband can stay with me, right? And he can stay with me in recovery, too, even though I have Covid? And my baby? You won’t separate me from my baby, right?”

This was all answered in a reassuring affirmative if I elected to have the OB on duty perform a “C” in the next hour. No such promises could be made if I were to be transferred in an ambulance—alone—to Tacoma General, which was door number two.

I’m not going to tell the whole sad story just now. It’s frankly too much. Suffice it to say that I things, took a turn for the worse. My son was three days old before I ever saw or touched him. While I struggled in the continuous care unit to make it through Covid pneumonia with an abdominal wound that sent me to “pain level 10” with every cough, my son was languishing in a NICU—several cities away from me.

Aside from the health concerns, we were caught up in a political miasma that made me wonder when he would ever be given to me. Things kept changing on a dime. First my baby was about to be placed in my arms, then he was’t. Then he was to be brought to me very soon, then he was to be transferred to another hospital. Then my husband was to be sent home, and I was to be left here alone—another anguished, lonely Covid case that everyone wanted to wash their hands of for fear of being on the wrong side of some constantly evolving policy or other.

O did we pray! Thank God my husband had the presence of mind to baptize him in the operating room. It was no small consolation. But will they tale my husband away from me, too? How can I face this nightmare alone? God. Please, not that.

Finally, after hearing our situation, the director of the cozy, small town hospital, St. Elizabeth’s of Enumclaw, came back to us and said:

“I am not going to separate you two. They wouldn’t let me see my father when he was dying from Covid. It was awful, and I’m just not going to do that to someone. You’re staying together. And when you get your baby back here, he can stay with you, too. You’re a birthing family, and you’re going to stay together as far as I’m concerned. Just keep that yellow gown on, and keep you mask on, and don’t leave this room, okay?”

God bless her soul.

What happened mentally, physically and spiritually in the next days and weeks would take a book to fill. After a long convalescence, and many months, I waited, chomping at the bit to start over again. I wanted a DO-OVER. In fact, I texted my midwife about planning a VBAC while almost as soon as the surgery was over! As things got worse, my desire to do it again intensified. I did not want this horrible experience the be the last chapter of my story about birth.

And in a strange way it wasn’t. I did birth again. Not in the way I ever wanted or expected, but I did carry and birth again.

When the next two babies came out, they were already gone, but I was able to allow my body to pass them naturally, rather than getting another surgical procedure—and this was a grace. I naturalness of the process contained healing for me.

The first miscarriage was so early, it was more like a heavy period, with some extra tissue from the placenta, and with a lot of sorrow and disappointment. I had already told my family I was expecting, so I felt ashamed. Even though it wasn’t anyone’s fault, I felt like I had failed to carry this baby successfully. I guess this is normal. After “failing” to birth Virgil, this new “failure” reopened a wound of self-doubt and anxiety.

I never settled into the next pregnancy. I kept it a secret from most people. I reluctantly added my name to the parish prayer list for expecting mothers. I wanted and needed the prayers because I was scared I would lose this baby too. I regretted it after I did lose the baby, and people at church were still congratulating me on the pregnancy because they saw my name on the list. I guess won’t make that mistake again.

I didn’t cry at the ultrasound. I already knew. There were signs. I decided to wait for my body to miscarry naturally, as I said. I wanted to let my birthing muscles work. After the disorientation and loss of the birth with Virgil, I just wanted to feel them again. And I was not disappointed, at least, in this. It took about a week for the spotting to appear. It was all so slow. So much waiting.

I had started taking walks in the woods near our house, partly to help move things along, and partly to try and do something for my soul. This was my midwife’s suggestion and it was well-taken.

I got the idea to try devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows from listening to a well-known exorcist priest, Fr. Ripperger, talking about it as I fell asleep one night. Sometimes, when anxiety is too much, I resort to listening to comforting voices in my earbuds that can take my mind off of whatever is bothering me. These days its often a recording of Fr. Ripperger giving a talk somewhere. As I was drifting in and out of a weary, fitful sleep, amidst all the sadness and anxiety about losing the baby, I heard the tinny, distant little voice in my earbuds say…”Our Lady of Sorrows.”

I had heard of the Seven Sorrows Rosary many years ago. I was curious about it back then, when I was a single, new, “baby” Catholic, but honestly, I was a little afraid of it. Somehow, it just felt too heavy; maybe just a little too maudlin for me. Too…Marian? But that was before I gave birth to children. That was before Covid. That was before a lot of things. Hearing the title of Our Lady of Sorrows spoken into my pain, I realized that now is the time for this devotion. Now, more than ever, I need to connect with Our Sorrowful Mother.

So I bought a booklet from TAN, and a little white-pearl chaplet. This chaplet is different from the traditional Rosary in that it contains seven sets of seven beads. One is to meditate on the seven sorrows of Mary while praying a Hail Mary on each of the seven beads, with and Our Father in between. If one is familiar with praying the Rosary, its quite self explanatory. To help me learn it, I found a recording online of some nice-sounding Irishman praying it, and I liked it better than the other ones, so I downloaded it and took it with me into the woods each day.

Soon, I couldn’t wait to get out of the house to pray my Seven Sorrows Rosary in the woods. The exercise, the fresh air, and the beauty of late winter slowly turning into spring, did something for the wounds in my soul. It began to cleanse me as I began to bleed. The broken and falling down trees; the timid appearance of new buds; the faint hint of color appearing day by day in the winter woods, spoke to me of God’s plan for life, for death, and for rebirth, too.

For weeks, I made art, and prayed the Seven Sorrows, took my “medicine” walks and waited. And one day, it started. Strong contractions came. My husband was busy taking care of the kids, so I had to do it mostly alone. I thought I had been quite prepared but I wasn’t actually prepared for how much like a tyoical labor this would be. My body used a lot of power detach my placenta from the uterine wall, and to bring for the broken parts, the blood and tissue, and the gestational sac containing our tiny baby.

I remember explicitly offering up my pains as they came to Our Lady’s Intentions. I hummed “Stabat Mater Dolorosa” as the next contraction became too intense to continue. Our Lady of Sorrows was my focus until coping with the pain and accepting the reality of the moment was all that existed. I was surprised how powerful this was and how much I had to vocalize, get down on all fours, and move in all the ways I knew how to bring forth a child from my womb. Not exactly like a full term birth—but partly. Not different in kind, only degree.

After a time of grateful rest, I finally let out an involuntary yelp as the gestational sac came out. It was about the size of my fist, and still warm, almost hot from my body. How sorely I wished in that moment to be holding a living child!

I went and tore open the sac with my fingers trembling over the sink. It was hard to bring myself to do this, but I felt I must. Inside, I discovered something surreal, something I never thought I’d see with my own eyes; like seeing the earth from vantage point of the moon. A tiny human body, no bigger than my thumbnail, shone vividly through the clear fluid of the sac.

It was like a little astronaut, floating there serenely in the blackness of space; a precious stone glittering under the water of a stream; something shining out distinctly from the surrounding pebbles and debris; something irreplaceable and priceless.

Reluctantly, I broke the sac. The precious waters spilled out. It was tragic to see this beautiful thing disturbed. But now the tiny human form was there for me to touch. I examined it, noted the hands, feet and eyes. I kissed it with my lips. It smelled of birth. I baptized it, conditionally, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: “Dolores Simeon Suberlak.”

The midwife came the next morning and there was a lot of fuss about collecting the remains into the sample container properly, and filling in the paper work to have him sent to the lab for testing. My midwife was again wise in encouraging me to have one more look at this incredibly work of God’s design, and say goodbye to my baby one more time.

Some weeks later, on my way into the woods with my Seven Sorrows Rosary, I got a call from the OB who’s office I’d sent the sample through. She informed me, as I neared the trail head, that my child was, in fact, a boy, and that he had Trisomy 15—a genetic condition which is not survivable. He would not have lived.

So I knew then his name is Doloran. And I knew, undeniably, with medical certainty, that God’s plan for his life was fulfilled. He would not have lived outside the womb. He would not have lived. Strange what verdicts can feel like a mercy. Strange what designs God has for our eternal existence that we know nothing about. Was he created and ensouled by God, in order make use of a body for so short a time, to be brought directly to God, to live eternally, without ever being born?

There are many other things to work through, here. The word “limbo” is in my mind much lately. There is much to say on this question, as well as other “Swords of Sorrow” to describe in this story, one of which was bestowed upon me just today. Perhaps I will write about it later, when I have learned more of Our Lady’s patience. I am working through these things as I keep walking though these woods with my beads.

From my journal, March 15th, 2023:

“Is it chance or is it God’s hand? A genetic fluke resulted in my husband’s sister birthing two healthy babies today. Another fluke caused this baby to develop a mosaic of causes and effects that resulted in a cacophony—a disorganization of cells that could never have come right. Yet he was alive and, according to our faith, he was ensouled. When I held him in my hand it took my breath away. He was like a little astronaut floating in the perfectly clear, safe universe of his gestational sac, still warm from my body, but not living. Not in this world. 

It was a sight I never thought I’d see, something you learn about and imagine, but when you see something so hidden with your own eyes…like looking down at the earth from the moon. It was a holy thing, his little body. Little Doloran—Sorrowful One—belonging to Our Lady of Sorrows. Little astronaut, going into outer space…already gone…”

I woke up this morning on the feast day of Our Lady of Sorrows. I was aware that I had just been dreaming of my white beads, the pearl white beads of my Seven Sorrows Rosary. The beads were inside me somehow, in my dream, turning and rolling and clicking together gently, giving me comfort and sweetness inside. I open my eyes to the crucifix by my bed and was already speaking with Jesus, thanking him for his mercies.