Two angel figurines remind Lesley and Bob Noguchi of their babies lost to miscarriage. They named their unborn children Francis and Lucia Joy. (HCH Photo | Anna Weaver)
By Anna Weaver
Hawaii Catholic Herald
For all the couples happily celebrating the birth of a child, others know the pain of miscarriage and stillbirth.
As the Diocese of Honolulu is creating a ministry about miscarriage (see sidebar), the Hawaii Catholic Herald spoke to three local couples who have experienced it.
The Noguchis: Instinct is to pray
Lesley and Bob Noguchi already had four children when she found out she was pregnant again in 2014. But eight weeks into the pregnancy she started cramping and bleeding and her doctor confirmed she was miscarrying.
Lesley said she was grateful to be working part-time at the Diocese of Honolulu for Jayne Mondoy, the Office of Religious Education and Faith Formation director, because Mondoy had miscarried herself and knew the grief Lesley was experiencing when she told Mondoy what was happening.
“Your instinct is to pray for them and just do something because it’s still your baby,” Lesley said. Mondoy was able to provide a cruet and holy water, and Deacon John Coughlin, the diocesan deacon formation director, who worked down the hall, said a prayer for the unborn child in a small ceremony. The Noguchis named him Francis.
After some at their parish of St. Ann in Kaneohe heard about the miscarriage, Lesley was surprised at how many women shared with her that they had also miscarried.
“So many people experience it, but you just don’t know about it,” Lesley said. To which Bob added, “Most people experience it alone or with their family.”
When Lesley miscarried again this past December at around five weeks along, they had a better idea of what to expect.
The miscarriage happened on the feast of St. Lucia. The Noguchis’ second oldest child, Bobby, was devastated at the loss of his future sibling and asked if they could name the baby Joy. So the child was named Lucia Joy.
Lesley and Bob Noguchi in the side chapel at their church, St. Ann in Kaneohe.
The Noguchis’ four boys occasionally still ask things like “How old would Francis be now” or talk about themselves as part of a family of eight.
Both Lesley and Bob say having a supportive doctor and their friends at the diocese helped them process their grief better.
“It’s a baby. It’s your baby,” said Bob, who is the religious education director at St. Ann. “Especially as Catholics, we believe in that.”
And yet, “so often with miscarriage you don’t feel like you’re allowed to feel that it’s a baby,” said Lesley, who now works in the diocesan finance office.
Having medical personnel treat a miscarriage in very clinical terms with not much follow-up of emotional support is often the case according to what the Noguchis have heard from others that miscarried.
“That’s where it begins, where you realize, ‘I must not be allowed to grieve this and this is not for real,’” Lesley said. “Because, you know, doctors are just clinically saying, ‘OK, you’re done, your procedures over,’ when really you’re left with this emotional issue.”
The Noguchis also wished there had been a prayer for their miscarried babies. Most prayers they came across were for the parents, not the child itself.
But a serendipitous moment after their second miscarriage has added to their healing process. When they were visiting Bob’s sister, she gave them an angel ornament with Lucia Joy’s name engraved on it. What his sister didn’t know is that the couple had gotten an angel ornament for their first miscarried child, Francis, at a diocesan miscarriage retreat in January 2020 (see sidebar). This second angel figurine was a wonderful pairing.
“She just felt drawn to do something. It’s just perfect,” Bob said of the gift from his sister, who also had a miscarriage before.
Both angels now hang in the prayer space in the Noguchi’s home “as a reminder of our two little ones in heaven.”
The Carahasens: You didn’t talk about it
Fred and Lina Carahasen are active Catholics, both at their parish of St. Elizabeth in Aiea and in diocesan work. Fred is a permanent deacon and Lina works as the deacon formation coordinator under Deacon John Coughlin. The Carahasens have three adult daughters and several grandchildren.
But it has taken Lina the better part of four decades to truly begin grieving the loss of her and Fred’s second child to miscarriage at six weeks gestation.
It was 1974, and “At that time you didn’t talk about miscarriage, you just didn’t. It was like something that happens,” Lina recalls.
Deacon Fred and Lina Carahasen
She remembers going in after miscarrying for a dilation and curettage to remove any remaining fetal tissue and avoid infection. Fred dropped her off but wasn’t allowed inside for the procedure. In a very clinical manner, the remains were put in a container labeled “products of conception” and taken away.
When she was early in her pregnancy with daughter Lianne the following year, Lina started having some spotting again. Worried she might miscarry, she decided to cancel a family trip to Disneyland, which upset their oldest child, almost-6-year-old Kimberly. But Lianne was born healthy the following March.
After that, Lina said she didn’t consciously think about her miscarriage much except on Nov. 22 every year, what would have been the baby’s due date.
“Man, it’s amazing how you can be numb and in shock for 47 years,” Lina said with a hint of surprise in her voice.
However, when Lina heard that fellow diocesan staff member Jayne Mondoy was starting a miscarriage outreach program, she told Mondoy she’d had a miscarriage. Mondoy invited her to come on a retreat for those who had miscarried.
“And then it started to surface,” Lina said about her emotions regarding her miscarriage years ago. “Because I think I hid it.”
“I did not go through a grieving process and I think that’s what I need to do,” she said. “I know for a fact that I have a hard time with loss … it affects me deeply.”
Lina’s feelings are validated by science. An April 2020 article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology talked about the psychological impact of miscarriage. It cited a study in which 29% of women surveyed after having a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy experienced posttraumatic stress after one month of the loss. Moderate to severe anxiety was reported in 24% of the women after one month, and moderate to severe depression was reported in 11% of the women after one month.
“Women experience high levels of posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and depression after early pregnancy loss,” was the conclusion.
Some of the Carahasen family, including two of Lina and Fred’s daughters, Lianne and Shawna, in Oregon in 2017. (Courtesy photo)
Lina has since started reading news stories, studies and books about miscarriage.
“It’s so good to see that there’s a lot of publicity about it now because women are wanting to talk about their experience.”
For Fred Carahasen, Lina’s miscarriage had always been in the back of his mind. At the time it happened, Lina was angry at him over something, and Fred blamed himself in some way for the loss of the baby. He understood the idea that a miscarriage can be the body’s way of handling a nonviable pregnancy, but still had feelings of regret, sadness and depression from time to time.
“When it comes up, I always think back and forth, ‘What if that was my son? What would he be like if he grew up.’”
The couple had picked the name Stephen if their first child was a boy, so they think of their lost baby by that name. They’re both looking forward to the naming ceremony for miscarried children at the March 25 Mass for the Solemnity of the Annunciation at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa.
“It is not a closure, but it’s a beginning,” Lina said of her delayed grieving process.
She was also surprised at how much Fred grieved the loss of their unborn child when he later shared more about his feelings.
“When I pray, I pray for my wife, and I pray for my three daughters, and I pray for the baby, that one day I will see him,” Fred said.
“I think for me as a deacon we need to preach the truth about the sanctity of life from conception to natural death. This miscarriage has really brought to me a sense of what I’m doing is right and what I believe is right.”
“It’s God’s creation whether it was miscarried or aborted,” he added. “From the moment of conception, this is a living being, and even if it lives one month, six weeks, two months, it’s still God’s creation, God’s gift, and it will always be that way.”
The Villenas: A lot of tears and hugging
When Chrislyn and Linden Villena were pregnant with their first child, Jayden, now 17, people would joke with them about having a whole basketball team of kids. Linden, a basketball coach, joked along, “Well, at least five,” so they could cover the court.
Up until this past spring, they had to settle for three. Along with Jayden they have Jadelyn, 13, and Jorden, 9. But the couple was pleasantly surprised last spring to find out Chrislyn was expecting. When she was 12 weeks along, they announced the pregnancy on Facebook on Easter Sunday.
Their kids were shocked and then excited. Her older ones would tell her to go rest, offer to carry things for her and remind her of foods she couldn’t eat while pregnant. The youngest, Jorden, looked forward to teaching the baby new things. Linden would make runs to get papaya and other foods to satisfy “the baby’s cravings.”
The Villena family, from top left: Linden, Jorden, Chrislyn, Jadelyn and Jayden
With the pregnancy coming at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chrislyn said, “Things were new to the whole world and we were trying to hold on to this new part of our life, that hope.”
But three days after announcing the pregnancy, Chrislyn began having cramps and bleeding. At the emergency room, it was confirmed she was miscarrying. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Linden had to wait outside for word on what was happening to be relayed to him by nurses.
Chrislyn at one point fainted and was bleeding so much she had to go to the trauma unit. She cried as nurses held her hand and wiped her tears through her D&C procedure. But she said, “God has a way of sending us what we need.”
The couple saw those signs from God in an emergency room nurse who checked in with Linden outside and was very kind. His name was Christopher, which is Linden’s saint name. It also turned out that Chrislyn knew one of the trauma nurses helping her that night and who also helped update Linden outside.
“I thought, ‘OK, Lord, you are sending me all the right people. I don’t feel as alone,’” she said. “That was how we were able to have some sort of connection and peace until I was able to be released.”
When they came home from the hospital and had to tell their kids the baby was gone, Linden broke down and couldn’t speak. Eldest child Jayden’s reaction was to be so upset that he had to go for a long run. Youngest child Jorden would mention over the next weeks how he had been excited to share his old bike with the baby and other little things.
There were “a lot of tears and hugging and praying and pointing them back to what God was trying to tell them,” Chrislyn said.
For Linden, while he wasn’t the one to miscarry, there was still grieving. “I already kind of had a little bit of a relationship with the baby, caring for it, caring for Mom, having a bond with the children,” he said.
The Villenas named the lost child Jayvee Damien Ku’uanelamakamae Villena. Jayvee was like the kids’ initials, J.V. Damien was after St. Damien because it was “a strong name and a name of sacrifice.” And Ku’uanelamakamae means “my precious angel.”
Seventeen-year-old Jayden Villena, 13-year-old Jadelyn Villena and 9-year-old Jorden Villena hold the ultrasound of their youngest sibling, a baby named Jayvee who died in utero at 12 weeks old. (Photo courtesy Chrislyn Villena)
Chrislyn said that they used the miscarriage “as a moment to teach our children about life and death and God’s plan for us, that we trust it.”
When people asked her how the baby was, Chrislyn would tell them what happened. And to her surprise, many people she knew had also experienced miscarriages. Some had them years ago, and some more recently.
“I felt such a kinship with them,” she said. “You know, grief is grief, loss is loss.”
“I felt at peace and comfort that I could share that with them,” she said. But she also struggled in seeing women announce their pregnancies and have babies around the time that she would have delivered Baby Jayvee.
The Villenas dedicated a daily Mass to Jayvee and went as a family to the service dressed in black as a way to memorialize the baby. They also include Jayvee on family ornaments they put on their Christmas tree this past year.
Chrislyn would like priests to have more training on accompanying families who have experienced miscarriage and for churches to include those lost to miscarriage in the annual memorial Mass for the dead.
And she hopes more women get to share their miscarriage stories with others.
“A lot of my healing started when I found out there are so many other women who suffered a miscarriage, but … they didn’t get the chance to grieve,” Chrislyn said. “They didn’t get a chance to acknowledge the loss because no one accompanied them and said, yes, that was a life. Yes, that was part of you, that was your baby.”
A new ministry
The Diocese of Honolulu is starting to form a ministry for those impacted by the spontaneous loss of an unborn baby, starting with a “special observance for miscarriage” at an upcoming Mass with Bishop Larry Silva.
The March 25 Mass takes place on the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary, at the Co-Cathedral of St. Theresa in Honolulu. During the Mass there will be a ceremony for families to remember and name their miscarried children.
“When we commemorate the lives of our little ones lost in miscarriage, we acknowledge that from the moment of their conception, these precious beings were beloved by God and by us,” said Jayne Mondoy, the director of the Office of Religious Education and Faith Formation, who is heading up efforts to establish the miscarriage ministry along with support from the diocesan Respect Life office.
Mondoy is also collaborating with Malama o Na Keiki, which is a cultural nursing program that’s a part of Caring for Hawaii Neonates, a non-profit 501c3 organization of registered nurses who specialize in neonatal intensive care, infant hospice, fetal demise, family grief counseling and outreach.
A “Lei Poina ‘Ole” (“Beloved keiki always remembered”) retreat day at St. Anthony Retreat Center in Kalihi on Jan. 19, 2020, took place for women and their loved ones who have miscarried children.
There are plans for more retreats and outreach.
The official text from the “Order of Naming” will be available from the Office of Worship for pastors to use.
If you would like to attend the March 25 “I Called You By Name” Mass with a naming ceremony for babies lost to miscarriage, RSVP at catholichawaii.org/AnnunciationMass_MiscarriageBlessing.
The Mass is primarily to mark the Solemnity of the Annunciation, said Jayne Mondoy, with the naming and blessing integrated into it. So anyone is welcome to attend whether they experienced or were affected by a miscarriage or not.
