After Two Years, My Rainbow Baby is Finally Here

**Trigger Post**

On June 2nd, my husband and I welcomed our rainbow baby into the world.  She's a beautiful little girl (we had no idea which we were having), and weighed 7 lb, 1.8 oz and measured 21.8 inches.  She came via Cesarean due to complications after a nice 16 hours of pain med free labor where the cord was wrapped around her neck and certain labor positions were causing decelerations in her heartbeat.  I was put on oxygen.  I was terrified.  I couldn't risk it.  When my doctor mentioned plan B, I said "DO IT."


So here I sit, almost three weeks later, with my little girl in my arms.  Her heart shaped face and delicate features seem a contrast to my own.  I spend hours looking at her and wondering where she came from, trying to associate this little girl with the one that I dopplered every day in my belly, the one I poked with abandon at my NSTs.  I'm confused at where my pregnancy went, and where she came from.  They don't seem to be the same little person.  


Every hour I check her to make sure she's breathing, and I still can't put her down out of my sight in her crib, despite having a monitor.  Every day I wonder when the universe is going to steal her away from me.  It's a whole new set of fears.  And those songs that I sang to her while she was in the womb?  Well I certainly didn't expect that I would be singing them someday to my daughter.


The hardest moment came when I was released from the hospital on June 5, 2012.  This was two years exactly from being released from a different hospital with my arms empty and leaving my stillborn son behind.  This time I was holding a little miracle as I was wheeled to my car.  My daughter's first outing was to the cemetery as we held a balloon release for my son.  It was a day of such absolute joy and such absolute sadness.


Having my rainbow makes me realize what I'm missing not having my son here.  It makes me realize what I will never see him do.  I remember the days after his birth as I thought about him my milk would let down and it was salt in a wound.  Now as I sit here breastfeeding my daughter, I think about what it would have been like to have a toddler running around at the same time.


I can't bring him back, and I can't bring back the two I lost so early, but I can devote all of my love to my daughter.  And I can try to remember that she is a very special girl as she has three angels who will watch over her as she grows.