Caleb Michael Claydon

Today was the due date for Caleb Michael Claydon. Unfortunately, little Caleb was born in May, not October or November (which, as you can guess, means he was not meant to live long in this world).

Caleb was the second son that Christy and I have had born in the second trimester--too early to live outside the womb, but old & developed enough to require "something to be done." With Samuel (our first son, who was stillborn at 22 weeks), Christy had labor induced. After the delivery she had a retained placenta, which required a D&C, and then a blood transfusion to replace all the blood she lost. Obviously, losing a child is hard enough; having to spend a couple of days on a labor & delivery ward (hearing the cries of healthy infants and rejoicing of happy parents and families) while recovering from losing a child almost seemed like adding insult to injury.

This time, when Christy and I found out we'd lost Caleb, wanting to spare her the pain and agony of another "fruitless" labor, I brought up exploring "other options." You know, a nice, anesthetized procedure, one where Christy would fall asleep, things would be taken care of, and she'd wake up in a recovery room, spared the memory of a delivery, and ready to go home in a couple of hours.

Christy wanted nothing to do with it. She couldn't bear the thought of her child being removed from her surgically in little bits. While she knew Caleb was no longer present in his body, she wanted to give him the dignity of a birth, a birth as normal as possible under the circumstances.

Going through each of our pregnancies has taught me much about the depths of faith, strength, resilience, and love my wife, Christy, possesses. That was exponentially more the case with Caleb and Samuel. Her desire to bear them didn't wane when she realized they'd died. She wept, she mourned. She knew they were in heaven, and thus she was still their mother. And so she wanted to do what she could to treat their earthly, though departed, bodies with respect.

Being a father to Caleb and Samuel has also brought home to me the process of parents grieving for a child, and the issues surrounding "reproductive choice," in ways I never would have imagined had I never walked through the experiences of their births. Their little bodies were so not ready for this world outside their mother's womb; but they so obviously would have been, had they lived on a matter of weeks more in their mothers' womb. Their thin legs and tiny fingers seemed to need just a little more strength, their eyes just a little more clarity, and they would have been ready to run and draw and wonder at their surroundings, right along with their brothers and sisters.

We still don't know what caused each of these little boys to die (despite a series of tests--quite extensive the second time around with Caleb). But they did live long enough for us to get to know them, however fleetingly. Samuel was alive long enough to grow strong enough for me to feel his kicks through Christy's abdominal wall. Caleb's life was much shorter, but long enough for Christy to "see" him on an ultrasound (heart beating, legs kicking and all) a couple of weeks before he died. But God took them each home. Christy and I can look forward to meeting our sons in heaven, knowing we did our best to be good parents to them, but that their lives here were only meant to be especially brief.

What struck me the first time I saw each Samuel and Caleb, and still weighs on my soul, is that every day children the gestational age of each of my sons are aborted in this country. Routinely. It's hard to be able to express the depth of pain that causes my soul; as close as I can relate it to is the feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see battlefield aftermath pictures of one of the world wars, or the pictures the GI's took of the concentration camps when they were liberated at the end of WWII. My heart breaks to think that out there many, many parents lose their children; but in those cases it isn't an act of God, but of human will. Many of these mothers and fathers may never weep (this side of eternity) for their children; but many do, or will. I pray that as many people as possible might be spared that sort of pain...

So I look forward to meeting Samuel Zechariah and Caleb Michael some day--some day when I can hold them, and they can hold me back; when I can talk with them, walk with them; and when I can know that death will never part us again. I miss them dearly; and their little lives make me treasure the four children I get to enjoy here on earth that much more.

But until then, I thank God, and my sons, for teaching me about the depths of love, and the sanctity of life, in ways I never would have learned without them.