The late Cardinal O’Connor celebrated a special Mass on December 28^th, 1993, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, at Holy Innocents church in Manhattan. He was there to dedicate the church’s new shrine in memory of children who died unborn—the Shrine of the Holy Innocents.

My husband and I were in attendance. The Cardinal’s homily that early morning moved me deeply, because he spoke about the pain of miscarriage. We had lost our “honeymoon baby” in late August, and I was grieving.

I still have the clipping from an article in Catholic New York, written by John Burger (Jan 6, 1994):

Cardinal O’Connor spoke of his sister and her daughter, both of whom carry the painful memory of their miscarriages. “I’m not sure the Church at large has fully appreciated the loss of babies through involuntary miscarriages, and the loss of babies who are stillborn.” He offered women who share that pain the consolation that those unborn take part in “the conception of Jesus.”

I did find this consoling, as much of my experience had been awful. After I experienced some light bleeding at 10 weeks, a sonogram found no heartbeat. I chose to wait at home to lose the baby “naturally,” but after a full week with only intermittent bleeding, I suddenly started hemorrhaging and had to go to the hospital immediately. I was terrified; there was so much blood, I thought I was dying .

Maybe the worst part: A priest friend asked me later if I had baptized the remains. I was shocked. I hadn’t saved anything. I didn’t even know I was supposed to, even though I was a devout and practicing Catholic and worked in the pro-life movement. No one had prepared me. I know I was distraught and in a panic at the time, but I still carry some sorrow and shame when I think about it. (Thankfully, three decades later, there is much more guidance from the Church, easily found online.)

The other hard part was that very few friends and well-wishers treated my loss as a person. I got many “Oh you’ll try again” and “miscarriages are so common,” often hearing “at least you know you can get pregnant.” I was confused at times myself—had the heart ever beat? Maybe the embryo didn’t make it far at all. Should I be so devastated? Was the baby I talked to and dreamed about real?

So these words of the Cardinal at that Holy Innocents Mass meant everything to me.

At the moment of conception in the womb of Mary, what we call the Incarnation … all of humanity was changed … Is it too much to believe that every innocent infant conceived in his mother’s womb shares in in the conception of Christ and  … as we share in the Mystical Body of Christ, in some ways shares in this immense power of Christ to change the world?

Changing the world! It is beyond human understanding. But I know the conception changed me. Even biologically: It’s recently been discovered that even in early miscarriages, the fetus’ cells fuse with the mother’s and some of them stay for decades or even forever (the fascinating biological phenomenon is called microchimerism).

What we didn’t know at that Mass was that I was pregnant again, with a little soul who was born safely the next September, my son James.

On All Souls Day, I pray for all my deceased loved ones, including this tiny soul, my first-unborn, who I expect to meet again in heaven.