Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I’m Amy Watson and I am really, really glad you’re here today. I was thinking because it is Easter time and um, Whatever religion you are. Easter time is kind of a, a time for rebirth and spring and there’s a lot of symbolism and we talk about resurrection and how Jesus died for us and how he rose from the dead.

And so I was thinking about this question. Will I see my baby again? And for some of you, this might not be a hard question to answer, but I just wanted to explore it today. I was thinking about a time. Not long after Lauren died, Lauren is our fifth daughter. She was still born at full term, and we believe in Jesus Christ and we believe we’ll be resurrected, and we believe that we will get to see our babies again.

And so we had to explain this to our children Now. When we talk to children about grief and death, sometimes we use really confusing language, and it can be, it’s a really hard concept sometimes for children to understand. So I worked really hard to be really clear, to be really honest and open. Um, but we had taught our little girls about resurrection and actually Lauren died right before Easter, so it was kind of right there and I thought we had explained it.

Quite well that we would see Lauren again, that she would come alive again. But probably a few weeks or months after, uh, Lauren had passed and a little time had passed. One of my daughters, I think she was about six years old, she came and said, Hey mom, when is Lauren gonna come back? And I realized in that moment that we had not explained this really well, that she had been waiting, um, and it kind of breaks your heart that she had been waiting.

For her baby sister to come back and thinking like it’s gonna be soon. And so we had to sit down and kind of talk about it some more. And I still don’t think it’s a kind of a hard concept to understand when we say we don’t know when she’s gonna come back alive. We don’t know what that timing’s gonna look like, but it’s probably gonna be a really long time, and it’s probably not gonna happen during your lifetime or during my lifetime.

But, and so that’s why I wanted to just touch on this. I wanna ask you, do you wonder where your baby is and if you’ll ever get the chance to hold them? I am gonna share today my thoughts on faith and life after death and how I use my beliefs to help gimme hope when I miss my babies. If you are a believer in God, this episode is for you, so I’m gonna, How the way I think about the next life is a conscious choice and how that increases my faith.

If you’re not sure what comes next or you are not sure on your faith or what you believe this episode is for you too, uh, I’m gonna share how you can settle into beliefs that feel good to you and bring you peace daily. It’s such a beautiful gift to give to yourself and it’s a lot simpler than you might think, and I think the problem is a lot of times is.

When we do believe or we wanna believe, we look forward with hope and we say, yeah, when I die, I’ll get to see my babies again. But that means you have to live your whole entire life without your babies and that can feel really sad and really heavy. So here’s, here’s what I want you to think about as you’re listening to me, as you’re thinking about this, as you’re maybe exploring your beliefs a little bit more.

I want you to notice, do I have the belief that my life will kind of be like a this, this little bit darker version of a life than it was supposed to be? Like my baby not being able to see my baby throughout my entire physical life on earth? Do I kind of think that that’s a less than. Because it’s kind of implied in that, right?

Like I know I’ll see my baby when I get to the other side. Also means, you know, like, I’m gonna pretty much be sad the entire time I’m on this side. Uh, and I don’t want that for you, but I want you to notice, cuz if that’s underneath, that might be a belief that’s just underneath or it’s just implied. Or you might actually think that like, I’m just gonna be sad forever, um, until this physical life is over.

But it doesn’t have to be like, there’s so much hope and we just passed Lauren’s 10th birthday and I can tell you that life is so, so good, right? Life is beautiful and full, and I don’t feel like my life is less than. Yes, there’s pain, yes, there’s struggle. Yes, there’s all of these things, but it’s not a less than life, okay?

And you don’t have to wait until heaven to find. You can have joy now. That’s the message I guess I’m trying to get across, is you can have joy full and complete joy now even without your babies in your arms. And yes, that is gonna be a magical day when we’re all together again, that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, but I just want you to know that you can have joy now and if you don’t believe, like maybe you believe that there’s nothing after.

And you just don’t get to have your baby ever, uh, you can still find joy and you can really find some peace around what you believe and find something that’s gonna help you. Now, cuz when we think that we like, it’s gonna be better sometime in the future. We really rob ourselves of, of enjoying today, even if today’s really hard.

Okay, so first I’m gonna share my beliefs and how they’ve evolved a little bit over time, and I’m gonna do my best to explain what I believe in a really simple and clear way. Obviously, I can’t go into like every doctrine. Um, if you have questions, you’re welcome to ask me. Over on Instagram, I met Amy Dot Smooth Zone’s Coaching.

I answer all my dms myself. I am there. I love to chat, uh, but I would ask that you be respectful of my beliefs. I have a strong testimony that comes from study and personal answers that I’ve gotten throughout my life. I also respect and honor everyone who believes differently than me. And I know that there’s truth found in many, many places, and Smooth Stones is a place where we are inclusive and open and loving to all.

And it’s a place where I share my heart and I ask that you be kind. It’s not always easy, um, to just be honest and put stuff out there when I know there’s people who might disagree, but it’s worth it to me because I. I want you to really know what I believe in, and I’ve shared a little bit in, um, another episode where I talked about my beliefs.

So you can go check that one out. Um, but yeah, let’s, let’s kind of dive in. So after I shared kind of my journey, then I’m gonna share some tips that will help you answer this question for yourself and stay strong when you are challenged by life events challenged by yourself, like if you got doubts coming up or other people who might.

Question your beliefs or or what you think’s gonna happen. So when we’re done, you’re gonna feel like you have a really strong foundation to stand on. Okay, let’s talk about me now. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which a lot of people still call Mormons. We are Christians and we believe in a life after death.

We believe that we will live as families in the next life. We believe we lived as spirits before we were born, and that we’ve kind of always been alive. That there was a lot of life in the spirit world before we came to Earth and we were gonna live as spirits. After we die, like when we die, our spirit and our body are separated again, and that’s gonna continue until Jesus Christ returns to the earth.

And we are all resurrected and reunited with our bodies. And then we’re gonna live forever as immoral being’s. With bodies when we get married, we do it in a temple, which you may have seen around in your area. They’re usually really beautiful buildings. Some of ’em are pretty big. Um, a lot of ’em have the golden angel with the trumpet on top.

And when we get married, we call it being sealed. Our marriages are not till death to us part, but they are for eternity. They’re sealed in heaven and on earth, so all children that are born to our families are born in this covenant, which seals them to us forever as well. Because of this belief, I always plan to be with my family forever.

We also believe that young children or babies don’t need baptism to live with us in heaven. We baptize our children when they’re eight, and we feel like they’re old enough to kind of make that decision on their own. So Jesus Christ took care of all of the details of anything that happens to these little children with his atonement.

Um, um, therefore, any babies that are lost are already saved through Jesus Christ, um, because it’s not. Really fair or just, or kind or loving to send these babies who didn’t have the chance to be baptized or to learn about Jesus Christ, to have to go away from the presence of God. We believe that they have a work to do and they’re busy serving in the spirit world, and they’re not so much floating on clouds playing harps, which is a beautiful, it’s a beautiful thing to think about, but we just believe that.

There’s a lot of stuff to do and they are anxiously engaged in that work. But what our church does not explicitly state in our doctrine is when the spirit enters the body, which gives us a bit of a gray area around pregnancy loss. Now I believe that my babies are unique individual spirits who came and got their bodies, and I will get to see both my babies again.

I also know some parents who believe that their miscarried baby spirit came back in a subsequent pregnancy. What’s most important is that each one of us is able to get our own answers. I believe that through prayer and study and being open to listening for answers, you can know for yourself where your baby is.

Joseph Smith is a modern day prophet who we believe restored the same organization that existed in the church when Jesus was on the earth. He and his wife Emma, had 11 children and lost six of them. So he had a lot of personal experience with the heartbreak of grief, he said, and repeated this same doctrine multiple times to different people.

He said, will mothers have their children in eternity? Yes. Yes. Mothers, you shall have your children for they shall have eternal life for their debt is paid. There is no damnation awaiting them, for they are in the spirit, but as the child dies, so it shall rise from the dead and be forever living in the learning of God, it will never grow in the grave.

It will still be the child in the same precise form when it rises as it appeared before it died out of its mother’s. That is a beautiful, strong, um, testimony. Now I plan to be buried in the same grave as Lauren, and I hope that on that beautiful morning of the resurrection, I will hold her sweet little body again.

For river, we don’t have their body, but I just believe that it will all be worked out. Whether you had to flush your baby, you had surgery, cremation, you had a vanishing twin, or any other type of loss where you might wonder. How does that even work? I mean, even with a burial, we know that there are natural processes happening to their little bodies.

I just choose to believe that that’s gonna all work out well. Some people have asked, well then will we be pregnant again if the baby came? Comes back at the same age. It was, what if I had multiple losses? Like how would that work? I don’t know, but I don’t need to know. I trust that it will all be worked out.

Joseph b Worthman said The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss. That was just taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in his own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundred fold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude.

One of the blessings of the gospel is the knowledge that when the curtain of death signals the end of our mortal lives, life will continue. On the other side of the veil. There we will be given new opportunities. Not even death can take from us eternal blessings promised by a loving heavenly Father Before my babies died, I believe this.

It was foundational in my testimony. It was clear and simple and brought comfort. I knew that trials were a part of this life, and if we endured them well, we would be rewarded, and that I would have joy and peace in the next. When my babies died, I had to really dig in and figure out what I really believed with Lauren, my first loss of a full term little girl.

After a relatively boring pregnancy, I started searching for answers for messages for words from spiritual leaders that would guide me. What I found was that more people than I had ever imagined had lost children and had had to wrestle with these questions. Personally. Their answers brought me so much comfort.

I turned to the Lord in prayer to find answers. I poured out my heart and my pain, trusting that he could handle it. I had some very specific questions and I was able to get very clear answers about where Lauren was and where she fit in our. None of this was easy. It took a lot of trust and a lot of energy and soul searching.

I know that when you’re in the real rawness of the, or the lingering aftermath of figuring out your faith, it’s some of the hardest stuff you’ll go through. It’s just like working out. When we exercise our muscles, the reason they get stronger is because the stress breaks them down. There are hundreds of small tears created every.

It’s in the recovery and rebuilding that we get stronger. If this is where you are, never tell yourself that your faith is weak or your questions are stupid, or if you could just give this to God, it wouldn’t hurt so much. It’s supposed to hurt. It’s supposed to be hard and you’re supposed to hate it.

That’s just the truth, and the sooner you can be okay with that, the sooner you’re gonna start rebuilding. But however long it takes, however long you wanna be mad, however long you need to struggle, that’s exactly how long it’s supposed to take you. With River, I felt completely thrown down a hole. All I wanted, all I prayed for was for that baby to live and they didn’t.

Then everything from my surgery was sent to a lab for testing and a mistake was made so that I got no answers. River was 14 weeks. In my shock, in my heartbreak, I didn’t even think to ask what happened to the remains. I wasn’t given any options. Then there are times where I didn’t wanna know, I didn’t want to hear definitively that my baby was put in the garbage with other medical waste.

I actually tried to look for some answers a little while ago, maybe get a wait or any information, and I just didn’t get any answers. I felt my nervous system activating in all the trauma coming back up, and so I dropped it. I still don’t have the answers I wish I did, so when I ask the question, will I see my baby again?

It’s a little different. I never saw my baby to begin with. I don’t know all the answers. Um, all I have is a little 10 11 week ultrasound photo. But I choose to believe that a God who can create a beautiful, intricate earth full of miracles has the power to put each cell of my little baby back together.

And someday I will hold them and get to know everything. All my questions will be answered, and all my pain will turn into joy. And I look forward to that day so much. I want you to notice in my story how I weave the things I’ve been taught in the doctrine of my church with my own. And then I fill in the gaps with faith and trust.

That’s what you can do too. Our faith is always going to be a little bit of a guess instead of making that a problem. You can see it as an opportunity. Maybe your faith has an explanation you don’t like that doesn’t bring you peace. It’s okay to decide not to hold onto that. Your faith might not have the answers you want.

Well, you can make up your. Talk to God. Ask him, study, pray, search on this podcast, I have multiple episodes about different faith and I plan to do more. I absolutely think it’s okay to pick and choose beliefs that bring you comfort. God doesn’t want us to suffer here, but he does ask us to step into the dark sometimes, trusting that there will be solid ground beneath our feet.

So I want you to think about how you would answer this question. Will I see my baby again? What will it look like? What will they be like? Will they be a baby or a grown person? What do you think? What do you believe? What questions do you have? What answers have you already gotten? As you explore this, I highly recommend writing it all down.

This is your permission to go get a real cute new journal to keep your thought work and your questions and your explorations in. I also wanna encourage you to imagine your baby in a way that brings you comfort. Death can be messy and cold, and even grue. I remember wanting to watch them put the dirt in the hole at the cemetery, but as soon as I saw that dry, dusty earth and heard it land down on her vault, I couldn’t do it.

I just had to leave. I like to imagine her in her cozy sleeper just as she was when we put her in her casket. That’s as far as I let my brain. With River, I spent a lot of years blaming myself and imagining my baby being thrown in the garbage. It tortured me like literal emotional torture, and I hated myself for doing that until I decided to stop and until I hired a coach to help me stop.

If you have a hard time with what happened to your baby’s body, or you wish you’d made different choices or if just the memory of what happened haunts you, give yourself so much. You’re not alone in this. So many people felt like they had no options or no idea of what to even ask for. I also want you to open up to believing that you can change the way you think about your baby’s body.

Now you can let go of the pain and the trauma and the memories that eat you up inside. You did the best you could with what you had at the time. I have helped countless families make these decisions of what to do, and it’s never. There’s never a perfect answer because it’s something none of us wanted to do.

If your story is heavy, please bring it to connection Call. I will help you and as you look forward and as we go through this Easter season and think of a lot about rebirth and all the symbols around you at this time of year, I want you to know that you get to choose what you believe about seeing your baby.

Again, you get to paint a picture in your mind and nothing, and no one can take that away. In some ways, we all probably have some parts, right? And in others we’ll have so much wrong about what that’s gonna be like, and that’s okay. That’s what living by faith means. The best part about seeing our babies again is when we do we’ll, never be separated ever again.

We won’t feel pain. Only love, they won’t suffer, only grow in health. Our arms won’t get tired no matter how long we hold. The best part about joining this Lost Mom Club is the amazing people we get to meet. I like to imagine all of us with our babies in a beautiful heavenly park with sunshine, laughter, and the greenest grass and the prettiest flowers on a perfect day all together at last, we are all forever connected.

It’s a true miracle, as are you and as are your babies. I know that I will see hold and raise my baby someday. I know that God loves each one of us, and I know that even when we can’t see the plan, and even when we hate the plan, God is working for our good, and Jesus is there to comfort us as are our angels that are much closer than we.

I wanna wish you a beautiful Passover in Easter, in Ramadan, and all the other holy celebrations going on now. May you feel all your loved ones near May. You feel supported. I love you. I’ll see you next time. Are you tired of feeling like your baby was somehow your fault? Go to Smooth Stones coaching.com and get my free mini course.

How to Stop Blaming Yourself After Loss.