E23 Faith After Miscarriage, Part 2 with Rosalynn Lasley: Finding God in the Grief | Healing and Hope After Loss

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:57)
welcome back to Into the Depths podcast. This is gonna be part two. My friend Rosalyn is here with us. She’s sharing a bit of her testimony and how God has healed her through her brokenness. And so last episode, she was able to share a bit about her miscarriage and her beautiful baby Ruby and how she had to…

endure that whole process and all the things that went wrong with that, but then how God showed up. So today we’re going to talk, she’s going to share a little bit more about some other traumatic events that happened to her and how God ⁓ just brought more healing and stretched her faith. So Roslyn, go for it.

Rosalynn Lasley (01:32)
Yeah, and it’s hard to, like sometimes looking back on all that we walked through in that season, it’s crazy to think like, this is really our story. Cause it, it just hard to wrap our mind around it. But in the end, like even though was a defining moment in our lives, it doesn’t define who we are. It was like a foundational part of our faith and having the opportunity to walk out our faith and let God be real to us and really cling to our faith. ⁓ But it’s not.

all that there is to our story. And so I think sometimes we’re afraid to share our story because we don’t want people to think that’s all that there is to us. But for me, these things changed everything about me. They changed everything about the way that I view the world. ⁓ There was times where I was just angry, for lack of a better word, that this was my story because I could never go back to who I was before I was Ruby’s mom. And I will never be who I was before I lost a baby.

Jen Cudmore (02:21)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:29)
And in some ways that felt so unfair. And then at times I was like, but this is the only evidence that she ever existed is that I am different because she was a part of my life for such a short amount of time.

Jen Cudmore (02:42)
That is such a great way to look at it. I love that. Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (02:44)
Yeah, but

it was hard. It was hard to get to that place where I was okay with it, but I didn’t have a choice. could, this was going to happen regardless of how I felt about it. So I could choose to embrace it and take it for what it was and walk through it and grow from it and work towards healing from it. Or I could just be bitter and angry and resentful the rest of my life. And so I chose to, you know, hopefully grow and heal and

Jen Cudmore (03:01)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:11)
⁓ You know, you’ll never be free, I don’t think fully, or fully healed from loss that’s devastating like that, or traumatic things that are devastating, but you learn to be in a place where you’re okay with it. You may walk with a limp, you’re gonna have scars, but that’s evidence of all that you’ve gone through. ⁓ And like we talked about, there was more to my story. So after I’d lost the baby and then I had to have surgery, ⁓ we know I still did want a baby. I still wanted an additional part of our family.

Jen Cudmore (03:29)
Mm-hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (03:40)
And there was people that kind of questioned that. There was somebody that told me, ⁓ maybe God knew you couldn’t handle another baby and that’s why you lost that one. And that was like the most hurtful thing. Like, yeah, thank you so much. And I struggled with, if I wasn’t pushing the issue of wanting to grow our family, then I wouldn’t have caused my husband to be heartbroken and my kids to be heartbroken and myself to be heartbroken. If I could have just been content, then.

you know, we wouldn’t have walked through this. But there’s that struggle too with that doubt that the enemy uses at these places when you’re vulnerable and that self-criticism and that self-sabotage and those harsh words internally that the enemy’s like, ⁓ let’s just kind of go ahead and pick at this wound. That’s a great opportunity to really kick you while you’re down. ⁓ Or like biblically, God said be fruitful and multiply. He didn’t say have two and call it a day because that’s all you can afford for daycare.

Jen Cudmore (04:35)
Yep.

Rosalynn Lasley (04:35)
He said,

be fruitful and multiply. There was no parameters on that. And so, like, I still had that desire to have another baby. ⁓ That didn’t change because we lost one. And, you know, I told, there’s people that were under the impression that you’re trying to replace the baby you lost by choosing to have another one. And it’s like, no, that desire to grow our family is still there. Ruby will always be a part of our life and a part of our story, even if it’s only in pictures and the scars we carry.

Jen Cudmore (04:38)
That’s right.

my goodness.

Rosalynn Lasley (05:02)
but we did still want another baby in our arms and something to still enjoy and celebrate. And so we were still trying for another baby and I was struggling with my health still and the complications after miscarriage. And again, it was like, I feel like nobody was listening to me that something wasn’t right and well, it takes a while for your body to get settled out. And I’m like, I feel like that’s not right. And still I’m just kind of doing a lot of research on my own because nobody would listen to me. And… ⁓

than struggling with my own faith of like, or just trying to work through like what God has planned for my life. Because if you’re not allowing this, our family to grow, maybe it’s not meant to be. ⁓ And I got to a place where I felt like, why should I even pray about it anymore? And I know that was the enemy, but like, why? God knows my desire. I don’t know how many more times I can tell him that this is what I want. I don’t know how many more times I can beg him for his answer to still be no. ⁓ But it was like,

Jen Cudmore (05:48)
Hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (06:00)
The enemy is using that, like don’t talk to God anymore. He already knows you’re wasting your breath. Like, regardless of what his answer is, he’s either gonna give me peace in his answer or he’s gonna answer my prayer. But he’s never wanting me to stop talking to him about the desires of my heart. Either he will change them or he’ll provide them. ⁓ And so…

Jen Cudmore (06:17)
Exactly. think that it’s, I’m glad

that you brought up a minute ago that like even well-meaning people, people who love us, that are friends with us and have walked through life with us can say such insensitive things. And their goal is to help, but not everyone is super in tune with the spirit. And so they might say something that they think is going to be encouraging, but be

Rosalynn Lasley (06:30)
Mm-hmm.

Jen Cudmore (06:40)
Anyhow, so that can be really difficult. So not only are you dealing with the traumatic event and you’re trying to heal from it and move forward, and then you’re dealing with your family’s emotions as well with the traumatic event. And then you’ve got these people that are saying these things that just make it so much more complicated. And then you’ve got Satan chirping in your ear, all this garbage. It’s like, my goodness, how in the world do people even overcome?

you know, sorrow and hurt because it feels like all these things are stacked against you. It can just be so crazy and overwhelming.

Rosalynn Lasley (07:06)
Yeah.

And that’s why so many people

don’t share that they’re pregnant or share that they’ve had loss because they can’t handle the world. Looking back, at the time I had a hard time ⁓ embracing it for what it was, but looking back I know that people mean well. For the most part there are people that are just nasty, but for the most part people mean well. They’ll say what they can because your discomfort makes them uncomfortable.

Jen Cudmore (07:28)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (07:39)
But there’s also times where I wish people would just be okay with being uncomfortable with you. ⁓ And there was a scripture and a story in Job that was really comforting to me too. And it talks about when Job’s friends, like when Job kind of lost everything, his friends came from afar and they just sat with him. They didn’t say anything for seven days. They just sat with him because they saw that his grief was very great. And that was just like, that was kind of the catalyst for ministry, because I did start ministry after this too, but.

Jen Cudmore (07:44)
Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (08:09)
Sometimes we just need people to sit with us in our dirt. Like, sit with me in my dirt. Don’t say anything to fix it. Don’t try to do anything to fix it. I know it’s uncomfortable for you that I’m uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for me as well. But it’s okay to just sit with me in my uncomfortableness. It’s okay to just sit in my dirt. ⁓ The most comforting things to me, there’s like two moments that were like everything I could have ever needed and that, you know, 11 years later, I still just cling to that.

Jen Cudmore (08:13)
Exactly.

Rosalynn Lasley (08:38)
was one friend, heard the front door open and my family was at church. It was like a 6 p.m. church service and I heard the front door open and I was like, somebody’s at my house. And it was that mentor that had shared about her own loss. And she hadn’t shared with me at that moment. She came and shared with me that night. But she walks in and I said, I thought you were supposed to be at church. Cause like it was just crazy to me that like, why is she skipping church to come see me, you know? And she just said, I just felt like I needed to be with you. And she just climbed in bed with me and we cried and she told me her story.

Jen Cudmore (08:45)
Mm.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (09:08)
And it was like, just to have somebody else cry with me instead of trying to fix my tears, cause it made them uncomfortable, is what I needed. I just needed her to sit in my dirt, like climb in my bed, my sheets are messy, whatever, and just be with me. And then another friend, it was probably about three weeks after I lost the baby, she came over and brought dinner. And we come in, like as I greeted her at the door, cause at that point I was a little bit more okay with being social and I knew she was coming over, but.

Jen Cudmore (09:13)
Yes, so beautiful.

Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (09:35)
I greet her at the door and I open it she just starts crying. And she’s like, I’m so sorry I haven’t come by sooner and haven’t reached out. Like, I just couldn’t, like, I’m so heartbroken for you. I just couldn’t pull it together. And so then as we’re talking about it, I’m sitting there comforting her because she sat over my loss. And it was like, in a weird way, it was just so comforting to me to have somebody else be sad about it, you know? And so all of that to say like, when you’re walking through…

Jen Cudmore (09:41)
Aww.

⁓

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:01)
really hard things or you have people you love that are walking through really hard things, you don’t have to say anything because nothing you say is going to fix it. We have that desire to comfort people we love and care about, but sometimes we just need somebody to sit in our dirt because our grief is very great and it is okay to not have anything that you can say to comfort somebody and just be uncomfortable with them.

Jen Cudmore (10:23)
Yeah, 100%. That’s exactly right. tell us about your sledding incident.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:31)
Yeah, so the same year of 2014, I call that year like my fiery furnace because we had gone through some other really difficult things before losing the baby. And then those things felt like I don’t think I could handle anything else and I lost a baby. And then we’re dealing with secondary infertility. And then we went sledding as a family with a friend for a birthday. And we’d gone sledding at that hill many, many, many, many times before. But we had just left.

Jen Cudmore (10:37)
See ya.

Rosalynn Lasley (10:59)
a different birthday party and on the way out a friend said, be really careful. And I kind of laughed like, we’ve gone sledding a million times, but, and I didn’t even want to go. I just wanted to spend time with my family, but I did not want to go sledding. was freezing and it had been icy, but we went. And I was on like an inner tube type sled with my oldest daughter in front of me. And my husband had pushed us going down. He was running behind to try and push us to get us to go fast. And for whatever reason, when he did, we kind of started going to the side.

Jen Cudmore (11:13)
you

Rosalynn Lasley (11:28)
And so he was yelling for me to bail, like, get off the sled. And I was afraid that I couldn’t get myself and my daughter off the sled. So I stuck my feet down to try and slow us or steer us a different way. And when I did, my boot hit like a little rut in the snow and it spun us. And so then we went sideways down the side of the hill into a tree. And so when we hit, ⁓ she just kind of bounced off the front and I ended up face down in the snow and I couldn’t breathe. ⁓

and I think I knocked the wind out of myself, but it was the most indescribable, excruciating pain I’ve ever felt in my entire life, and it felt like I was in pain everywhere. ⁓ But I was taking everything I could to breathe, and so then I was trying to roll myself over onto my back because I’m face down in the snow. ⁓ Once I finally got some air into my lungs, I started screaming for my husband to call 911 because I knew that I was hurt really bad.

Jen Cudmore (12:05)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (12:25)
He was trying to calm me down, like, you’re okay, you just knocked the wind out of you, but I knew that something was really, really wrong. So some of the other people that were sledding with us, as he’s like over trying to see what happened, ⁓ they called 911 and then ⁓ the paramedics came and they were trying to get me stable enough to take me out, because I was still kind of up high, but off the side of the hill, so they had to try and navigate through the trees with me.

And so they were trying to get my coat off and on this side, like it was excruciating pain when they’re trying to pull my arm this way to get my coat off and then going this way to try and get my coat off.

Jen Cudmore (12:55)
So

could you identify at that point, like kind of where the problem was, or were you just like, everything hurts and I need help? Okay, that’s what I was thinking. Okay. Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:04)
Yeah, it was everything. Like, I couldn’t even define what hurt. It was literally everything.

So they’re trying to get my coat off. I’m screaming and begging for them to just cut it off. And they wouldn’t. So you see all these shows where they’re like cutting people’s clothes off. Apparently in Alaska, in the middle of the winter, they won’t cut your clothes off. So I was screaming and begging them to please just cut it off because it hurts so bad. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (13:25)
⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (13:28)
but they wouldn’t. And so then they started putting fentanyl into my sinuses, like a liquid fentanyl into my sinuses, just to try and get me stable enough to be able to get me onto the bodyboard to carry me down, which that still didn’t help. ⁓ But they eventually did get the bodyboard under me and carried me down. And then they started an IV in the ambulance in my hand and were doing ketamine because the fentanyl wasn’t helping. That didn’t help. They told me, might make you hallucinate. But I’m like, no, I wish it would make me hallucinate because it was just

Jen Cudmore (13:38)
⁓ no.

Rosalynn Lasley (13:57)
Absolutely awful. I felt every single bump in the road, the entire way to the hospital, like they really need to pave the roads to Providence Hospital a lot better because it was horrible. But eventually, you know, when we get to the ER, they got my clothes off the traditional way the first couple of times, but it was just absolutely the most horrific pain that you could experience. I don’t know how I was still conscious,

Jen Cudmore (13:58)
Sure.

⁓ my god.

I’m

I don’t either. I was wondering that too.

Rosalynn Lasley (14:25)
They didn’t

either. said afterwards once they realized how significant my injuries were that they were shocks that I didn’t lose consciousness. ⁓ But so finally I get down to like my last couple of layers and they were like, okay, we’re cutting it off, which I wish they would have done that from the beginning. But they’d given me a whole lot of medication to try and get me loopy enough that they could get my clothes off. And I was like, can you give me just a little bit more medicine and then I can try and take my shirt off? Cause I really like this shirt. And they’re like,

Jen Cudmore (14:52)
⁓

Rosalynn Lasley (14:54)
But I’m like, obviously it was a little bit loopy at that point, but it didn’t help with the pain. ⁓ so in the end I ended up breaking, I burst my vertebrae in my back and foreplate. So T, seven, eight, nine, and 10. So the middle of my back, I broke pretty much all of my ribs. ⁓ So like the second rib under this shoulder blade, and then most of the ribs all the way down from there. I broke the transverse process from

T-78910 and a couple further down. I dislocated some ribs on the front side. I broke my shoulder blade on this side. So it was bad. Yeah, it was really bad. So I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but then they’d checked my oxygen saturation and they’re like, no, you’re breathing okay. But I was also screaming. So I had good oxygen saturation because I was screaming. Once I was finally relaxed and like kind of sedated enough ⁓ to not be screaming.

Jen Cudmore (15:30)
No.

⁓ sure.

Rosalynn Lasley (15:50)
then I wasn’t breathing well. And so they had come in and they ended up doing an epidural block to try and numb my ribs so that I could breathe, because my ribs were so broken that it was really hard to breathe. And ⁓ they didn’t tell us at the time, but then when they came in a couple days later to take the epidural out, they said I was about five minutes away from being intubated because I wasn’t breathing, because my ribs were so broken. And then they didn’t tell us this at all. I read it in my medical records later when I was like, what does that mean? What does that mean? And I…

Jen Cudmore (16:12)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:19)
Like every single time somebody came into my room, I kept asking them, can you show me my imaging? Because I felt like I needed to be able to see for myself to be able to wrap my mind around how much pain I was in. But then of course I couldn’t tell what I was looking at when they’re showing me stuff. But when I got the radiology reports back later as I was still trying to digest, like this really did happen to me. I’m not just making a big deal out of nothing. No, I really was in a lot of pain. I still am in a lot of pain. This really did happen. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (16:30)
⁓ okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (16:48)
It said that one of my lungs had been collapsed, but I didn’t know that until later on. So it was bad. ⁓ But at that time it just felt like, of course, of course I broke my back because why not? Like everything else has gone downhill literally so poorly that like, why not break your back? What else could possibly go wrong at this point in your life? And ⁓ I truly like looking back, I don’t know how…

Jen Cudmore (16:51)
I don’t know.

Right.

Rosalynn Lasley (17:15)
I would have ever been able to navigate that had I not had a relationship with the Lord. ⁓ And I still feel like I borrow faith from that season of my life because if God could walk us through the things that we went through in the beginning of that year, and losing a baby, and medical complications, and secondary infertility, and breaking my back, and…

Jen Cudmore (17:20)
Sure.

Rosalynn Lasley (17:37)
You know, just keep going and, and, and, and. You know, I didn’t work for three months after my accident because I physically couldn’t. You know, I couldn’t even get out of the chair to take myself to the bathroom. There was no way I could work. But God provided, like some people brought meals every single night for two months to feed us. ⁓ People, people we didn’t even know had given to like a GoFundMe or had shown up at our house and said, how much is your mortgage? Don’t.

Jen Cudmore (17:53)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:02)
lie to me. I want to know how much it is because I’m paying for it. God has provided in a way that I felt like this is what I’m supposed to do. So like if God would do all of those things for us in this season that just absolutely blindsided us, He will walk us through the other things we’re going to face now, big or small. And so as hard as that was and how much I, there’s times I still grieve that whole season of my life. I

Jen Cudmore (18:07)
Awesome.

Rosalynn Lasley (18:29)
There’s times that I battle depression because of my injuries, because I’ll never be the same I was before I broke my back. You know, there’s times I struggle with feeling sorry for myself. Like, I can’t do the things that other people can. I struggle with this. You know, it changed the way that I parent my children because I couldn’t play with them the way that I could. There’s days where I’m in bed because I’m in pain and like, it’s really hard to not let that eat at you.

especially when it was like I was just trying to have a good time with my family after we’d really gone through some junk. ⁓ But I can’t imagine navigating that without faith because there’s times where those sorts of things feel very hopeless.

Jen Cudmore (19:00)
Yeah. Yeah. So.

Yeah, 100%. So I want to dig into that. So tell us how long you were in the hospital and then just sort of like what recovery looked like for you and how God kept showing up. And you kind of already said that, but tell us a little more about that.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:20)
Yeah. So

I was in the hospital for a week when it happened. And because I had had so many complications with my health prior to that with miscarriage and surgery and all of that, I had met my out-of-pocket maximum for the year. So my accident happened December 27th, and I kept telling the providers, obviously I wasn’t in my right mind, ⁓ I just need to be out of the hospital by Wednesday, I think was the day, was the first of the year, because my deductible starts over. They’re like, you’re not going to be out of here by Wednesday.

Jen Cudmore (19:43)
gosh.

Rosalynn Lasley (19:49)
You know, but in my mind I just had like, I’ll be okay, I can tough it out. You know, could just, if I could just get out the hospital by Wednesday, it won’t be this burden. And that was the thing is I felt like such a burden for so long because like my grief was heavy and I caused my family all this sorrow because I wasn’t content and forced the issue of having another baby. And then I had to have surgery because my body, you know, didn’t deliver everything. And then I broke my back.

and so now it’s another burden and I can’t even go to work right now. So it was just the mental warfare that took place during those times was very, very hard. There was times I would sit up at night because I was in pain and I couldn’t get comfortable and I would just cry. And I never thought, why me? And I don’t know why I didn’t think that because there’s times where it would be very…

natural I think to think those things, but I truly sincerely never did. I thought, Lord, what do want me to do with this? And I remember crying and praying over and over and over and over again, like Lord, what do you want me to do with this? There’s a reason why you’ve allowed this in my life. There’s a reason why this is my story. Now what? What am I supposed to do with this? What am I supposed to make with this? I knew from the beginning with my loss that I was supposed to be very transparent about what was going on because somebody would be encouraged

by my story or they would know who they could turn to if that became a part of their story. And it wasn’t for like attention or pity or any of that. It was more like, I just know that my story is meant to be powerful and I don’t know why, but I will go with it if that’s what you’re calling me to do. But it was hard because I also felt very much under the spotlight of like, how am I gonna navigate this? How am I going to deal with this? How am I?

Jen Cudmore (21:16)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (21:36)
You know, if there ever is a day that I am angry about this or I’m wallowing and start feeling sorry for myself, somebody’s gonna use this to question the goodness of God. And there were people that will look at it like if you’re such a Christian and God is so good, then why is he allowing these things in your life? And like, I don’t know, I don’t know why, but they are here and so I’m gonna do the best I can with what I’ve got to deal with. And as far as healing goes, ⁓ I didn’t know until…

I think three years ago that I have a genetic disorder where my body doesn’t heal properly. So my bones never healed. Like my back has been broken for 10 years. ⁓ I had imaging on my neck. I think it’s probably been a year ago now. It was here when we moved to Virginia, but ⁓ when they did the imaging on my neck, they could see far enough down into my back. And it was talking about having these burst fractures. the ⁓ radiology report said something like, burst fractures of thoracic spine.

potentially from previous injury. So it looked fresh. Like they’re, I think it’s from her old stuff, but you know, like they weren’t really sure, but they weren’t supposed to be looking at my back anyway. So like my back never healed. ⁓ I guess I’ve just kind of learned to live with it, which is sometimes I have to remind myself of that. There’s times where I literally go and look again at the radiology reports, like, no, I’m not crazy. No, I’m not making this out to be worse than it is. No, I’m not just really dragging this out. Like.

Jen Cudmore (22:41)
⁓

There’s really something wrong there.

Rosalynn Lasley (22:58)
my pain is legitimate for a reason, because it’s still broken. ⁓ So I never did physically heal from that. And sometimes that’s hard, because I’m very limited in what I can do at times. But I still try to make the best of it. ⁓ After breaking my back, I still wanted a baby. So I had asked them in the hospital, ⁓ because I had this clam shell plastic back brace that clipped on both sides to try and hold my spine together. And I said, what happens if I get pregnant?

Jen Cudmore (23:02)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:26)
And they said, you should probably not really worry about that right now. And I said, I’m just letting you know I am worrying about it. Like, they thought it was crazy, but I was like, I still want a baby. My accident doesn’t change that I still want a baby. eventually we did have a baby and she’s almost 10 now. ⁓ And she knows about Ruby and we talk about her all the time. because truly that’s a part of our story and a part of our testimony. And she never knew what life was like before.

Jen Cudmore (23:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (23:52)
Ruby or before my accident, she’s only ever known me as this mom and you know there’s times where she gets frustrated because she’s never gotten to experience things like me jumping on a trampoline or that sort of stuff. I can’t run because the impact of running is hard on my spine and there’s lots of things that I can’t do and so she’s never gotten to experience those things with me and there’s times where it’s hard for her to wrap her mind around it. But it is what it is and like the fact that she’s here is a miracle because

Jen Cudmore (24:07)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:20)
God allowed me to still have a child after breaking my back and walking through all the other really hard things that I did. So like you are a living miracle. You are a living answer to prayer. There is a call in your life because God allowed you to be here and it took all these other things to breathe you into existence. So your life has a purpose. And so that part of my story is also a part of her story and my other children’s story and my husband’s story. And there’s a ripple effect from such really hard things that

Jen Cudmore (24:25)
Yeah.

100%.

Rosalynn Lasley (24:49)
Even when it is hard, I still sit there and think like, you do have a purpose for all of this, even if it’s not what I would have chosen for myself.

Jen Cudmore (24:57)
Yeah, exactly. your third child was born in October on my birthday. so your accident was December 27th. Was it because I can’t remember, was it that year that you got pregnant like right after the accident or was it one more year after that?

Rosalynn Lasley (25:04)
Yeah, you’re welcome.

Yeah,

no, so my accent was December of 2014 and then Coralynn was conceived in February of 2015.

Jen Cudmore (25:25)
Okay, so it was right after the accident that you got pregnant. Okay, so did that stress you out? Were you worried that your back could handle another baby or were feeling pretty? Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (25:28)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

was more worried about loss.

I never really cared about my back or the physical difficulty for me. I was worried about loss. And so ⁓ I found out was pregnant with Coralynn, ironically. ⁓ I was supposed to have surgery on my ribs because the one rib in the front was dislocated and the cartilage had been either stretched or torn, I can’t remember, from one of my front ribs. And so they were going to go and do a little surgery where they put a hole in the end of the rib and then they

Jen Cudmore (25:42)
Okay.

⁓

Okay.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:02)
put in like a wire to kind of hold it in. And so they’d asked me like, there any chance you could be pregnant? And I said, I hope so. And they thought that was a really weird response. So they, took a test cause I was like, well, I guess I probably should double check it and sure enough I was pregnant. So I never did have surgery, but I found out I was pregnant with her just before I was supposed to be due with Ruby. So that was really bittersweet. But I was thankful that God allowed the timing of that because I was.

Jen Cudmore (26:04)
⁓ yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:29)
even though I was afraid to be pregnant again and being pregnant after loss is its own set of challenges, it gave me some sort of joy to walk through a really heavy day or just even a heavy time period. Cause you’re thinking like, I had friends that were pregnant around the same time. And so I’m watching their pregnancies and their babies be born and thinking, this is how far I would have been in my pregnancy. This is how old my baby would have been. My baby would have been laughing and rolling over. And so that was hard. So it gave me something to focus on.

Jen Cudmore (26:55)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (26:58)
some sort of joy in the midst of still trying to navigate those feelings of sadness and jealousy and like, I didn’t want them to lose their babies, but I was still jealous and I didn’t even like that feeling. Like there’s, it was so many difficult things to navigate in that.

Jen Cudmore (27:08)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (27:13)
pregnancy after loss. there’s just a constant fear of losing a baby. You think if you get past the point of when you lost your other baby, then you’ll be okay. And then I wasn’t. And if I get past the point of, you know, the odds of losing a baby, you know, like out of the first trimester, then I’ll be okay. And I wasn’t. And if I get to the point of viability, meaning if the baby was born premature, even if they had difficulty, they would likely live, I’ll be okay. And I wasn’t okay. And I never,

Jen Cudmore (27:14)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (27:42)
really was okay until she was in my arms. And even then, I still struggle with anxiety. Like anytime she would get sick, I would panic. Like I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I would cry just because I was so afraid of losing her. And I still struggle with that a little bit now. It’s not as significant as it was when she was a baby, but it was still tough for a very, very long time that there’s this fear of losing another baby because once you’ve lost one, you realize that there’s no guarantees in life and it’s very fragile. So…

Jen Cudmore (28:10)
Yep.

Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (28:12)
It’s

been a long-term, 10, 12-year process of growing my faith through hardship and prayer and just trying to unwrap what that looks like and reminding myself of the goodness of God in the midst of really hard things, people that don’t have a relationship with the Lord or even people that struggle with it, that sounds crazy. How can you worship a God that allowed suffering? But like you said, in the world you’ll have tribulation, but take heart.

We aren’t promised this life that’s supposed to be without hardship. We’re just supposed to trust that there’s goodness in the midst of it all.

Jen Cudmore (28:50)
Exactly. now we tend to the things that we go through, we tend to help other people walk through. So I know that you’ve talked to other women who’ve gone through miscarriages and then had a rainbow baby. So tell me a little bit about how that experience has been for you being able to love on women who went through a similar situation.

Rosalynn Lasley (29:11)
Yeah, so after my loss, ⁓ I think it was through Alaska Christian Women’s Ministry, but a couple of the women that had kind of showed up to support me through my loss, even though they weren’t overly vocal about their own, ⁓ and just peer-to-peer support and conversation and navigating what this was like and knowing that our stories were different, but there’s still similarities in the midst of it all and there’s this understanding that you don’t have with other people.

we started a support group and it was a peer-led support group so wasn’t like we had any formal training ⁓ that we called Forget Me Not and just supporting women through ⁓ infertility, miscarriage, ⁓ stillbirth or infant loss. I don’t know that we actually had any women in our group when it was active that had experienced the loss of an infant, but we did have lots of women that experienced loss during pregnancy and… ⁓

Jen Cudmore (29:48)
Love that.

Rosalynn Lasley (30:07)
just navigating what that looks like. The hardest thing when you’re first going through it is when somebody asks, and even now I still struggle with it sometimes when people ask you how many kids do you have, do you say three or four? Because truly I have four, but you can only see three of them. And so it depends on who it is or what the context is and how I answer. So if I’m by myself and they can’t see my children and somebody asks me how many kids I have, I’ll say four. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (30:30)
Mm.

Rosalynn Lasley (30:32)
Sometimes I’ll say three, but Coraline will correct me. Usually if I say three, she’ll say, no mom, there’s four of us. And so people will say, do you have another one at home? And they’ll say, no, she died. And then people are like, I really wish I wouldn’t have asked. ⁓ People at Disneyland, when Ava was little, our middle, ⁓ she was five, I think we’ve gone to Disneyland. And she told the people at Disneyland all about her sister in heaven. ⁓ But there are people that are comforted or

Jen Cudmore (30:37)
Aw, sweet.

She’s in heaven. Yeah. ⁓

pretty

Rosalynn Lasley (31:00)
feel like they could be courageous to speak up their children that you can’t see because they did exist even if it was for a short while and they matter. So anyway, we did start a support group and it lasted for several years and it ⁓ was very heavy but it was also very good because we walked through things that other people didn’t or even the discussions of how do you handle when you and your spouse are not on the same page with your grief? And I was able to share, I resented my husband for a long time and that was so unfair.

Jen Cudmore (31:24)
Uh-huh.

Rosalynn Lasley (31:29)
And it really hurt him. And I did tell him that I did after I was kind of worked through it. said, you know, really resented you because I felt like you weren’t feeling the same way I was about it. But that was so unfair of me because if I didn’t know how I was going to feel on a daily basis, how was I to expect that you would be on the same page? Like how unreasonable of me. But I was in my feelings. So, you know, I can accept that that was not a healthy approach, but being able to talk through that with other women that are like, you know, my husband doesn’t want to talk about this or I want another baby and he doesn’t.

Jen Cudmore (31:51)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (31:59)
And like I can give them the inside of my experience where it may not be identical to theirs, but they can see the similarity or consider a perspective that they might not have otherwise because it’s not perfect. It is very messy. It’s very heavy. None of us really know how we’re going to feel until we’re walking through it. Each experience is different. There are women that have multiple losses and you know, there are times where the husband’s like, I can’t watch my wife go through this again because it’s the most helpless thing I’ve ever experienced.

Jen Cudmore (32:28)
Yup.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:29)
and watching you be absolutely destroyed and I can’t fix it.

Jen Cudmore (32:34)
Yeah, can’t, I mean, that must be so horrible for the spouse for sure. Okay, so ⁓ one last question before we wrap up. I would love for you to tell us about ⁓ these, what led you to get into doula work? How did you become a doula and sort of what, how does that wrap into your story? And we’ll end with that.

Rosalynn Lasley (32:38)
Yeah.

So I think the doula thing was just something that’s kind of always been wrapped up in who I am. So ⁓ I’ve never really been like naturally minded. like the chicken nugget mom that’s like, ⁓ sometimes we take vitamins, but we also love McDonald’s, you know? ⁓ So I did not have natural births. I knew nothing about natural birth when I had my own kids, but I’ve always loved babies and pregnancy like my entire life. If there was ever a baby, I wanted to hold it.

Jen Cudmore (33:00)
Okay.

Yes.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:20)
⁓ Like so much so because I would joke you hear a baby cry and I’ll say it’s because it wants me to hold it that when Coralynn was little if she heard a baby cry she would say he wants me to hold it because I always say that so she just thinks that’s what you say when you hear a baby cry. ⁓ And so going into doula work I didn’t even know that there was such a thing I just was like what does it look like to be able to experience pregnancy and birth with other people. So there was a friend of mine that had put a name to it I didn’t know that there was a name. ⁓

Jen Cudmore (33:25)
Yes.

Adorable.

Rosalynn Lasley (33:50)
she said, you know, have you ever considered being a doula? And I’m like, what? And so when she was pregnant, she’d invited me to attend her birth. And so it was this the most incredible thing I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. So was like, yeah, I want to do this more often. ⁓ So if it wasn’t for my injury, then I probably would want to do it like full time or even pursue midwifery.

Jen Cudmore (34:04)
Yeah.

Rosalynn Lasley (34:12)
but my body can’t handle it. doing birth work is something I don’t do it much now. I actually will have the opportunity to support a birth here soon, which I’m super excited about, but my body just can’t handle it. So it’s kind of few and far between. And when I was in Alaska, it was a lot of like word of mouth or friends and things like that. I wasn’t really advertising for a lot of clients and stuff like that, just because I know that once I’ve attended a birth, I’ll typically have days where I have a lot of pain, but to me it’s worth it.

Jen Cudmore (34:21)
Yay.

Sir.

Rosalynn Lasley (34:41)
The pain peaks and valleys, but the joy is constant. So it’s fine for me if I have a little bit of pain to be able to attend a birth. It’s just the coolest thing in the world. ⁓ So I think it’s just kind of how I am as a person. think I’ve always loved that sort of thing.

Jen Cudmore (34:58)
Yeah, I wish I would have known you when I had little babies. Way back when.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:02)
Oh, I would have told him. Yeah. And then

I wish I wish I would have known what I know now when I had my babies, but like I’m still content with how it went. but yeah, it’s a cool thing. Yes. Thank you for asking me.

Jen Cudmore (35:11)
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing some of your story with us. I

think that that will really inspire a lot of women. So we’ll go ahead and wrap up this episode. ⁓ So I have a couple of questions just to round out the episode like I like to do. So as we go about the week, let’s explore the depths of this final thought. Can you identify some broken places in your life that are not working right instead of ignoring or resisting maybe what God is trying to do in your life?

Where can you open up, lean in, begin to seek that healing, begin to grow your faith, let God stretch you? essentially, where can you start allowing God to lead you through a journey of healing and freedom? So we’ll leave you with those thoughts and we’ll see you back here next time. Bye everybody.

Rosalynn Lasley (35:57)
Bye, thank you.