Support for Pregnancy and Infant Loss: A Salvation Army Approach

On October 15, people around the world will observe Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. While pregnancy and infant loss (PAIL) is often considered a taboo topic, the experience is relatively common. About 1 in 5 pregnancies in Canada ends in miscarriage. And around the world, approximately 1 in 6 people, women and men, experience infertility.

There is a great pastoral need to support those experiencing PAIL and childlessness. So, how can we respond?

In this episode, Captain Tinisha Reid, corps officer at Edmonton Temple, shares about her own experience of pregnancy loss and infertility, and Captain Laura van Schaick, divisional director of women’s ministries in Ontario, walks us through a Salvation Army resource for hosting a "Hannah Service."

Hannah Service Resources

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. On October 15, people around the world will observe Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. While pregnancy and infant loss—sometimes called “PAIL”—is often considered a taboo topic, the experience is relatively common. About 1 in 5 pregnancies in Canada ends in miscarriage. And around the world, approximately 1 in 6 people—women and men—experience infertility. For many people, it is a deeply painful experience. There is a huge need for support, for spiritual and emotional care. As the church and The Salvation Army, we have an opportunity and a pastoral responsibility to come alongside those who are facing this grief. And so, on this episode, we sit down with Captain Tinisha Reid, who is the corps officer at Edmonton Temple. Captain Tinisha shares from her own experience of pregnancy loss and infertility, and we’re very grateful to her for opening up this conversation. We also speak with Captain Laura van Schaick, the divisional director of women’s ministries in Ontario, who shares about a Salvation Army resource that can help our churches support those who are experiencing childlessness.

Hi Captain Tinisha, and welcome to the Salvationist podcast.

Tinisha Reid

Hello. So good to be here.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate you joining us today and grateful for your willingness to share on this topic, which, of course, is a difficult one for many, many people. Pregnancy and infant loss is something we don't talk about a lot, even though it's relatively common. Of course, this month, we have an opportunity to bring this into the conversation. We have Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, which is October 15. And so I'm just wondering, why do you think it's important for people to observe an occasion like this and have opportunities to talk about pregnancy and infant loss?

Tinisha Reid

It is so important. We as women sometimes are afraid to have those conversations about our stories, and we sometimes have this fear of opening ourselves up to that conversation. And I believe we just need to take the moment to step back and allow the conversation to happen. While we know many people struggle with this, we don't know who struggles with this. So if we allow the space to allow the conversation to start, we get to find friends and just realize we have the support around us that we need to help us in navigating the loss of a pregnancy or an infant.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, it's absolutely true, because we really need that community to process things like this. We don't want to suffer in silence, but so many people do, and I understand this subject is near to your own heart, and I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your own journey with pregnancy and infant loss.

Tinisha Reid

Sure, yeah, it is very close to my heart, and there is a lot of silent suffering. For many years, my husband and I had tried to have another child, to extend our family, and it just was not happening. And so many people would have the conversation with us, “Oh, it's time to have another child,” or “Your daughter is lonely. You need to have her a brother or sister,” to which many times we didn't know how to respond, because many people didn't know our silent turmoil that we were sitting in. We had intentionally tried infertility and different things for eight years, where we did have a miscarriage in the middle of that. And it is just such a raw experience when you have been trying for so long, and then to have the pregnancy loss in the middle of such a already emotional time. And I believe that we just, we just don't know how to handle that, so that's why we don't really talk about it sometimes. For our first child, the doctors looked at us and said that we would never conceive. And it was such a moment where we just felt so deflated and so lost, and we were just like: What does that even mean? Like, how? How can we be such young, healthy people, and the doctors not expect us to ever have children? And so, in those moments, you just feel so helpless and so lost that you don't know where to turn, or you don't know who will actually relate to such a loss and such a moment. So, as I said, the doctors said to us that we would never conceive, and then we were surprised with our daughter in pregnancy, and we praise God for that blessing and miracle. And we remind her many, many times that she is our miracle. But then quickly after we had Rachel, so many people started the, “OK, when's the next one?” Or, “She's going to be lonely,” or “You should, you should raise them together. They'll have each other.” And we were just like, if we could, we would. So, it became such a topic where we had to guard our hearts, and we had to try to navigate how to celebrate with others who were experiencing pregnancy, but also learn how to mourn our own loss of, this might not be a reality for us ever. I remember the morning that I received the positive pregnancy test, and just the excitement that went through our bodies. And we started calling our families because we had been trying for so long, and we had finally received this positive test, and we were like, it's positive—like we all need to pray. We don't know what this means, but like, we all need to pray. To which very quickly, then, within a couple weeks, we were having a different conversation, where we were miscarrying. And the reality of having to make two of those phone calls are just such opposite ends of an experience. And yeah, our hearts, I think, as a protection mechanism, you sort of just, you retreat in those moments, to not have those conversations, because there's more questions than answers, and it just gets very, very overwhelming to try to navigate how you’re infertile, or your pregnancy loss or your infant loss, because there's no loss like it and it's such a—yeah, it's just massive loss. To which then, we had waited another couple years and sort of said, That's it. No more fertility, no more anything, no more nothing. And we just sort of said, That's it. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't. This is our family of three. And we were blessed with another pregnancy, and this one, we did get out of all the scary stages of the first trimester and halfway through the second trimester. But then through the second trimester, had so many fears, and afraid of a pregnancy loss, afraid of a healthy baby, and the fear that was just gripping us to be like, how are we going to ensure that this pregnancy survives and that our child will be healthy? And so that on top of it is a whole different conversation. But the fear that grips us as women and as couples and families, navigating through infertility and infant and pregnancy loss is a massive mountain to climb, sometimes, because there's so many emotions, there's so many questions, and sadly, so much guilt comes with it, because you're like: is it me? What do I do? How can I fix it? But we know that there's not much any of us can actually do in those moments, because there's not much we can do.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, it's absolutely true. And of course, as you said, it does sound like you suffered a lot in silence. Were there places you did find support in that time? And can you maybe talk a little bit about how you encountered God in that moment as well?

Tinisha Reid

Conversing, because we do start to blame ourselves, because we do live in that guilt and that worry of, it's something I've done or something I didn't do. We become silent because we're afraid to open up and have those conversations. But as we became very open with our story and trying to understand infertility and pregnancy loss, and just trying to come to grips with what that looks like, we started finding ourselves in conversations with other people who had had pregnancy loss, who had struggled with infertility. So in the conversing, I found so much support and love and understanding that God had given me these beautiful people to remind me that I didn't need to live in guilt and that I did need to be afraid, to be open, because it was nothing that I did or didn't do. And God just gave me beautiful people to help me realize that, and to help me just work through our own personal story with that.

Kristin Ostensen 

Drawing on your experience as an officer, can you talk about some ways that you have opened space to have conversations around this topic, or ways you would approach maybe different family events or family-related ministries that have been intentional around recognizing people's experiences?

Tinisha Reid

Yeah, so the church is a family, and we are all part of a village that are called. So just helping our churches realize that we all have a part to play. And, specifically on Mother's Days and Father's Days, we don't just put out to the mothers and the fathers of the congregation. We will remind everybody on those days that we all have an influence on each other in this corps. So, if you are a part of this family, you have an influence, and you have an influence on all of the children and all of the people who call this church their family home. So while we will say “Happy Mother's Day” on Mother's Day, everybody in our congregation would be reminded that we're all influential in our experiences in the church family. When we're doing premarital counseling, we try to navigate the conversation of, What does the future family look like for you? as delicately as possible, because you never know if people have already had those conversations of infertility or not, with doctors. So we always have an intentional conversation though, about, have you had those conversations about what a future family looks like? Or, have you had those things? And for many reasons, so that we can support a newlywed couple, if they have had some news that they can, we can help them navigate some conversations amongst our church body, because sometimes the automatic thing is somebody will say, “Oh, you just got married. When's the kids coming?” And sometimes that's a very hard conversation to have when you don't know. Or just trying to be open with their own story, which is why I'm sitting here today as nervous as I am, just starting the conversation, making it a conversation that we don't need to live this in secret, and just allowing people to be a part of the conversation and sharing our stories, and just making it a part of our everyday life. We will, when we introduce our children, we introduce them as our miracles, and which then people sort of be like, “Oh?” and we're like, “Yeah, we were never supposed to have children, and we've been blessed with two miracles.” Because even that way we introduce them allows people to ask the question, to then try to open the conversation. So then as people talk about the new officers coming in who have two miracles, it sort of makes it a normal conversation with us, to realize that we've struggled with that, and it just opens doors.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, that's true, because people don't always know it's OK to talk about unless you make it OK, right?

Tinisha Reid

Absolutely. And like we've said like so many times, there's this fear and this guilt and this, it's almost like a shame that we hold on to when we have had a pregnancy loss, or we're dealing with infertility, or we've had an infant loss, that we're just like, What could I have done differently? But at the end of the day, there's nothing we could have done differently, and we just need to trust in God's perfect plan. And we just need to sit there and while we'll have way more questions than answers on all of the things, not just infant and pregnancy loss, trying to start the conversation is one of the biggest things.

Kristin Ostensen

And that's such a good point, right? Because I feel like as Christians with anything that involves suffering, that's kind of the eternal question—like, why God? Why is this happening to me? Why have things turned out this way, you know? And how do you have faith in those moments, to trust God? And I'm wondering if you think the church could actually offer something unique in this conversation, because we do have this bigger hope.

Tinisha Reid

Well, I think we hold on to that bigger hope, right? We hold on to that promise that he will work all things for good for those who love the Lord, and that we just continue to live in the promise of: he's got us, and He knows what's best, and we’ve got to live in his will. And sometimes that is so hard to do. I know that, I've experienced that. I've sat on the floor crying, “Lord, You've done this for Sarah. Please do this for me.” But then it's in the letting go and letting God do his work. And I just thank God because he did answer the prayer of my heart, to have two beautiful miracle children. But it's learning to trust in those moments, that even when the prayers might not be answered in exactly the way that we wanted them to be answered. I know we had rubbed shoulders with a lady in one of our congregations who had said to us, “God never blessed me with my own children, so he gave me all the corps officers’.” And this lady just absolutely loved on so many corps officer kids, and just recognized the influence that she had and the need that the corps officers would need for the support and the extra help with their children. So I think that sometimes we have to take a step back and just look and say, “If this wasn't what was meant to be, how can I now take my story and live out your will?”

Kristin Ostensen

While more people today are becoming comfortable with sharing their stories, PAIL is not a modern phenomenon, and we see examples of this in the Bible, such as Sarah, Bathsheba and Hannah. 

As a way to recognize Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, some Salvation Army churches have begun holding “Hannah Services.” Captain Laura van Schaick gives us an overview of this service and how our corps can be supportive to those experiencing PAIL and childlessness.

So, can you tell us about the Hannah Service? What's involved and what does it entail? 

Laura Van Schaick

Yeah, so the Hannah Service was first imagined quite a number of years ago by an officer in the U.S.A. Central Territory. And when she came up with this idea, she described it as a gathering time and a space for women who have experienced infertility, pregnant loss, infant loss, medical diagnosis that prevents future pregnancy—you know, it was really meant to be all encompassing, but it was meant for women, and really fell under the category of, the umbrella of women's ministries. She named these gatherings after Hannah, who's a biblical character. Many will be familiar with her. We read about her in 1 Samuel 1, when she's just desperately crying out for a child, pouring out her grief before God. And so that was kind of the idea of the services, that we could mimic Hannah and come to God with our grief and our sorrow and just our big emotions about finding ourselves childless. While these services were intentionally designed with women in mind, I think over the years, these services have gradually shifted to be more inclusive as we recognize that infant and pregnancy loss affect the whole family, not just women. And so, because of this, some have also chosen to just simply call them pregnancy and infant loss remembrance services, or something like that. So, you'll still see the term “Hannah Service” around, particularly in The Salvation Army. But a lot of other denominations are starting to do this as well, and they really just take the form of a memorial service. Each service ends up looking a little bit different depending on your context. They can feel more like a traditional church service, with an opportunity to sing songs of lament or songs that speak of praising God in the valley. They can have a devotional thought. A time for prayer is definitely important. Some of these remembrance services can also be a bit more laid back or creative in their field. I know that some have just provided space for prayer stations, rather than being a full service—it's just, you know, we're going to make our church available, and there's prayer stations around. People can come and maybe place flowers or light candles or reflect on Scripture. Others have included, you know, sharing circles, so an opportunity for those experiencing pregnancy and infant loss or childlessness just to be able to get together and share a bit of their story and to, you know, kind of glean some of that strength that comes from shared experience. So there's a lot of different ways that these can take shape and take place, but the important part is that we are making space for those experiencing pregnancy, infant loss and childlessness to come together and to know that the church is a safe place for them to share their story and to grieve, and that those of us that maybe haven't experienced what they are experiencing are here to come alongside them and to grieve with them and to provide some comfort.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, that is so important. I love that you added that at the end about how even if you haven't experienced childlessness yourself, this is also an opportunity to support people who have.

Laura Van Schaick

Absolutely.

Kristin Ostensen

And from your experience as an officer, why do you think it's important for the Army to make space for those conversations, especially in our corps setting? Why is it so important to offer support to people who are experiencing this kind of loss and childlessness? 

Laura Van Schaick

Yeah, our society hasn't always done well at supporting those experiencing pregnancy and infant loss and childlessness. We can think of this tendency to wait until the second trimester to announce a pregnancy, you know, just in case something unexpected happens. That speaks, I think, to a culture as a whole that's ill equipped or unwilling to address significant loss such as a miscarriage or infertility. Sometimes we just get uncomfortable about it as well. We have a hard time talking about it. And so those that are experiencing this very real pain and suffering in their life often do so in silence to just kind of avoid the awkwardness. And yet, I think as faith communities, as churches, we can be uniquely positioned to come alongside those who are experiencing loss such as this. I mean, the Bible reminds us that God is close to the brokenhearted. And so, as we seek to be the hands and feet of Jesus, we can reach out to those who are hurting, not only on October 15, which is this kind of national day of remembrance. But throughout the year, the church can hold sacred space for those that are struggling. Think about things like Mother’s and Father's Day, back to school events—other times that may be triggering for those mourning lost children or mourning their opportunity to be a parent, where the church can, I think, be sensitive to those triggers and to those hurts, and just say, you know, we see you, we love you, and we want to be here for you. I know for myself, I am very privileged. I haven't experienced child or infant loss. I had two successful pregnancies. I have two beautiful children. So I don't necessarily know what those experiencing this have gone through. But I really think that it's important for us to come alongside and to be allies with those that are experiencing this type of loss.

Kristin Ostensen

If you’re listening to this episode today as an ally, we want to thank you for being a part of this conversation. And for those who have experienced this grief first hand, know that you are not alone.

And if there is somebody listening to this podcast right now who is struggling with infertility or infant loss or pregnancy loss, what would you say to them in this moment? What would you have wanted to hear when that was, when you were in the depths of your struggle?

Tinisha Reid

It's not your fault, not your fault. And the love God has for you and the merit of the person you are is not all put on this one thing, because I know that right now you are resting in that—that is it, that is who you are. You have lost a pregnancy, or you're in infertile, or you have had an infant lost, but it's not your fault. You are loved. You are a cherished child of God Almighty. And I know it's easier said than done, but rest in that. And he has a plan, and while sometimes I really struggled with what that plan could be, or understanding what that plan could be, being reminded that he had a plan and that I had to sit in it, and sometimes in the uncomfortable, sometimes in the unknown, sometimes in the “I don't really want to sit here right now,” but knowing that nothing I did had caused anything and it wasn't my fault, and that I was a beloved daughter of the King. Sometimes not always easy to identify that and to live that, but if people keep reminding you of that in those moments: it's not your fault, and you are loved, loved by God Almighty. To be reminded of that, I think. And I was, and I know that, but to keep hearing that help so much.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, no, that's very true. Sometimes you need those reminders. It is so hard when you're in the struggle to believe it in your bones, as it were. 

Tinisha Reid

Yeah.

Kristin Ostensen

Well, thank you for this incredibly honest and, I think, beautiful conversation around this subject. I really pray that this will help people who are listening and the people that this resonates with, the words that you just spoke, that that those would really be a blessing to them. And I'm so grateful, I really am so grateful for you coming on the podcast today, for opening up and, yeah, holding space for all of us.

Tinisha Reid

Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story.

Kristin Ostensen

Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Salvationist podcast. You can find a link to the Hannah Service resources in the show notes. For more episodes of the podcast, visit Salvationist.ca/podcast.