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.

Rainbow Pregnancy Loss Zone

**Triggers**

Sorry I've been away for a couple of weeks. I've been sticking my head in the ground like an ostrich, hoping that this rainbow pregnancy will speed by. I've even asked people to hit me over the head and knock me out and wake me up in a few months. Sadly, no one has taken me up on it yet.

I'm now in my loss zone, the period of time where everything went wrong with my son. To be honest, I never thought I would even make it this far again. Now that I am here, I keep waiting for the other shoe to fall. It hasn't, but when will it?

It's a strange idea that everyone else seems to have no problems with the idea that there will be a rainbow baby here at the end of May/early June. People are buying things, talking about baby showers, asking me how excited I am and for names. I just stare blankly when these conversations happen, almost as if my synapses don't fire. As if I don't recognize that they're talking about me. Two weeks ago I was told to start training my coworker for my leave and I looked at her and said "Where am I going?"

Today I have my repeat ultrasound to check the growth of the baby. For me, it is hurdle one of the scariest two jump hurdle in my life. It is the ultrasound where I will see if it happened again. As I type this, my hands are shaking and I can't stop crying. I know very well that they will check my blood pressure before the appointment and it will be fairly high. I feel like I should be wearing combat gear to go to this appointment. As I drive, I will be listening to 30 Seconds to Mars "This is War". I put on a minimal amount of make-up in case there's a lot of crying to be done.

And sometimes, the worst thing is as I sit there in the waiting room with women who have never lost a baby, they will be looking at me bawling and wondering what is wrong with me. They cannot possibly understand my pain or my fear. Especially as they have brought their mother, father, sister, cousin's cousin and some guy off of the street to see their ultrasound. I, on the other hand, am just going to try to survive and hope I come out intact with baby on the other side.

To those of you who have navigated your loss zone, know that you are very strong women, capable of anything. And for those of you who haven't yet, know that you are not alone, and my love goes with you and I will be holding your hand.

Healthy First Pregnancy Does Not Equal Immunity to Loss

As I get farther into my rainbow pregnancy, I see a lot of shocked and indignant women when they learn that there is something very wrong with their baby or that their baby has died. "But my first was perfectly fine!" These are the same women who usually follow it up with a comment that we've touched on before - "Pregnancy loss doesn't happen to people like me" or "People don't lose babies in my family".

Why is it that these are the same women who can also quote the age-old saying of "Every pregnancy is different"? If every pregnancy is different, that means that the wheel of fortune starts spinning each time you get pregnant. Just because you made it to the final round and came out with the grand prize, a healthy and living baby, does not mean you have been granted super powers and your next pregnancy will be perfectly fine. I sincerely wish this was the case, as we all do, but we all know quite differently.

All pregnancies are fragile and subject to Russian Roulette. Baby loss mommies know this all too well.

I look at the women who have never had a loss and take their children for granted and I think how lucky they are that the wheel didn't land on them. For those women who are finding out that the wheel doesn't discriminate? We've been there. For those of us who do not yet having a living child, the deeper fear creeps in that we may never know that love.

I miss my children every day, but one thing I know is that I am a better and more sympathetic person because of my losses. This is the gift that my children left me when they took my soul away. I can only hope that for those women who thought they had that cape of invincibility that they become better and more caring people too.

Stupid Comment #8: Baby Loss Only Happens To People Who Do Something Wrong

On a very popular baby and pregnancy site, I pop onto the board from time to time that has women due approximately when I am due. This board is full of baby names, ultrasound results, and questions about symptoms. It is a place where women discuss their hopes and their dreams for their unborn child. It is a place where women compare baby strollers, argue about whether or not to breast feed, and find new friends.

It is also full of women who post that their dreams have just been shattered.

Some women cannot venture into those threads because they cannot bear reliving their past, or they do not wish to think of all of the bad things that can happen. I go into them because I want to add my sympathetic voice to their sorrow.

Typically these women talk about what happened to them, and they get out their feelings. We have all been there. We have all thought "why did this happen to me"? We have all thought "what did I do wrong"? as well as countless other questions that will never be answered.

What I read the other day was the following:

"Only women who do something wrong lose their babies, so why did I lose mine?"

I have read several other posts with this sentiment, the sentiment that these women come from a family where baby loss doesn't happen, and we, the baby loss mommies, are part of families who lose babies all the time, who do horrible things and deserve to lose our children. It is an "us" versus "them" mindset, and suddenly these women are finding out that they are in the "them" category. What angered me even more is the women who were chiming in with their agreement.

I didn't do a damn thing not straight out of the books for any of my three pregnancy losses. I ate right, I slept on the right side. I exercised well, and I took my prenatals religiously. I didn't drink, I didn't have caffeine. I could go on and on. If there was a chance that it would harm my baby, I didn't do it, despite that I know that small amounts of some things are considered perfectly safe. I still lost my three children. I still buried three children. And I don't know all of my readers, but I can pretty much guarantee that all of you did the same as me.

I have a lot of sympathy for any woman who has lost a baby at any stage of pregnancy, or through SIDS, but I will not tolerate women trying to make us feel as if we deserved to lose our children. I will not tolerate women trying to make it seem like there are families who lose babies and ones who just don't deserve to.

At the end of it all, we are all the same. We are all mothers who have lost our children. We are all mothers who would do anything to have our children back. And we all know better. Baby loss happens to women like Russian roulette. Sometimes, for these women who are sitting there thinking that we have done something to deserve this pain, I sit here waiting for that axe to land on them too.

When You Lose a Baby, Your Next Pregnancy Should Get a Free Pass

Losing one pregnancy or baby to SIDS is bad enough. Why must I constantly see my friends, loved ones, and even my husband and I go through multiple losses and heartbreak before they are able to bring a baby home?

I think the universe should give any baby loss mommy a free pass on their next pregnancy, provided that they don't fall into the category of doing something so amazingly stupid which caused them to lose it (since I've seen too many stories of women abusing drugs, deciding that being pregnant is the time to take up contact sports, etc. and being surprised when their baby doesn't make it).

After all, going through another pregnancy is terrifying in and of itself. For me, having lost two early, the first trimester is a huge hurdle. When will I be told that the baby has stopped growing, or the heartbeat is too slow, or I'm sorry, we can't find a heartbeat. Once that hurdle is gone, then there's the later term loss hurdle to get through. A perfect anatomy scan is wonderful, but my son's was perfect. A stricture in the umbilical cord is impossible to detect except by future growth scans that for a first normal pregnancy no one would get.

Then if you lose again, you feel like your pawn has been knocked off the board game. It's not like the women who are on the Start space, trying to conceive. You're knocked into this "other" realm where you're a child again, watching everyone play a board game and you feel like you don't know the rules and will never be allowed to play, much less to cross the Finish line.

Women who have been through these ups and downs need this free pass. We at least need to know that even though we'll stress through another pregnancy, that things will come out okay. We don't need more stress, and more pain. We need comfort. We need to be able to flash a badge that says "Baby Loss Mommy - Free Pass to a Perfect Rainbow Pregnancy" when things get rough.

If anyone ever finds one of these, let me know. If I ever do, you can bet that I'll be sharing with all of you.

Elephants Truly Are More Intelligent Than Humans

It seems like every day I have to listen to a baby loss mommy tell me that someone has told her to "get over her loss" or asked her "are you still grieving?" with the sympathy of a brick. Why do we live in a culture where people are allowed to mourn Elvis almost 25 years after his death, but we are not allowed even a full year before the world wants us to just "get on with things".

We will never "move on". We will remember forever.

There's another animal who is said to remember forever...elephants. I ran across this quote:

"When a mother elephant loses her baby, they stand in a circle around her and allow her all the time she needs to grieve and mourn. They don't hurry her along, or push her to abandon the body. They stand in a circle and gently touch her with their trunks, a silent show of unwavering support.

Elephant mothers will stand with their babies for weeks, not eating or drinking, just holding them close and letting the reality that they are gone slowly settle in. And they are allowed that time by their family members."

As I sit here and constantly hear talk about how much smarter humans are than our other animal brethren, I have to disagree.

In our society, where getting everything done quickly and with a minimum of effort has become a norm, we've forgotten how to be there for each other in the way that we should be. We send a quick card and then we promptly forget each other's pain. How many of us have had someone give us the look of disbelief when we mention our lost one, no matter how many weeks they were when we lost them. "You're still grieving?"

Yes, yes I am.

Out of Nowhere Moment #1: Learning About Another Woman's Baby Losses

Over Labor Day weekend I had the opportunity to attend a conference and meet my favorite actress, who I will keep nameless in order to keep her private life private. This actress happens to play a woman in a television show who lost her daughter (insert vampires and scheming evil people here). This happened in season 2 of this show, and I happened to watch right after I lost my son. Watching this woman's struggle with grief and insanity, I felt a kindred spirit, even though it was just a character on TV.

I set out to tell her what a difference her show made to me in helping me through those first couple of months where I was the most vulnerable. It was by watching this show that I learned it was okay to grieve, and it was okay to feel crazy, but I had to keep going, if for nothing else other than people were depending on me and out of sheer determination and stubbornness.

I worried that I wouldn't be able to form complete sentences because I was starstruck. However, I did tell her, and I told her everything. I expected an "I'm sorry", after all, it's what we all hope to hear. And I did hear that, but it was followed by "I had eight miscarriages before my daughter" and the warmest hug I could have ever received.

Watching her as a person is awe inspiring. She manages to produce a show, to act in it, to run a charity, and to be a mother to her one daughter that she fought so hard to have. Something changed in me that day, something healed. And while I still sit here struggling to get pregnant again and find a way to bring home that child, it is a great feat to sit here and be able to smile again. Because when I had my picture taken with her, it's the first time since losing my son that my smile finally reaches my eyes. And I wish that for all of you.

So maybe this post isn't as much angry at others, but anger with myself. It took a much stronger person than I to show me that I CAN keep going, and most importantly, with a smile on my face.

Stupid Situation #6: Talking About Your Loss at Work

Sorry in advance, but this one is going to be a bit long!

I have learned some very important things in the past year. Apparently there have been revisions to the amendment that grants us our freedom of speech, especially in the workplace. Typically employers look the other way at non-work related conversations outside of breaks or lunch (unless you work in the equivalent of a sweat shop). However, what I didn't know is that there are some rules about what is "appropriate non-work related conversations while working" and what is (insert horror movie music here).

A month after I returned to work after losing my son, I was taken into a room by my boss, my boss's boss, and an HR Representative, where I was told that I was making people uncomfortable by talking about my child. I was told that these people felt like they couldn't put pictures of their children in their cubicles. I was told that they felt like they couldn't talk to me about their happy times, like the births of their children.

At the time I burst into tears. Now, the anger rides over me when I think about it. What bereaved mother wants to hear even a portion of that? I know that all of us have our own way of coping, and how long it takes for us to be able to tolerate seeing pregnant women and babies, or to just hear talk about it in general, but I'm pretty certain that none of us wanted that thrust in our face during our first month back to work!

This friendly "well-meaning" HR Representative proceeded to tell me that my company had some "help" options for me, and she handed me a brochure which also included names of day cares and a giant picture of a baby on the front.

I was told to just tell people "I was having a bad day" instead of talking about it. I was told that I could only have these conversations at breaks or lunches and quietly. I argued back that it meant that these other people then had to only talk about their "good times" during breaks and lunches and was told, "That's not what we meant." Sure it is. And I wrote it down, every word they said, if I ever need to use it again, that's after I cried for two straight days.

It's taken me almost a year to cool off from that incident. And here I sit, three weeks after my second miscarriage after my stillbirth and my boss brings it up again that someone complained that me talking about my miscarriage was making them uncomfortable.

I'm not even the teeniest bit sorry. They have a moment of uncomfortableness, and I have a lifetime of it. The other thing that grates on me is the junior high attitude of a grown man or woman going to the HR Department to complain. I wish there were "Whiner" badges to hand out to people. Or to staple to their forehead.

So here is what I've been able to figure out about appropriate conversations

As generated by my current employer, acceptable non-work related conversations during working hours include:

Sports

This includes who won what game, what teams are playing, fantasy football/gambling, how many children are playing for what recreational teams and how many home runs they got and how you are training your three year old to be the next Venus Williams), and how many beers you had while golfing.

Celebrations

This includes marriages, births, birthday party planning for your one year old where you talk in detail about his/her accomplishments, successful doctor appointments for your newborn where you give great detail about his/her growth percentile or that his/her stool has changed for the better, announcements of pregnancies and every week that you have made it through so far, and how little Johnny lost his first tooth.

Food

This includes recipes, restaurants, picnic planning, and how little Johnny is breastfeeding still, and topics about stopping breastfeeding and moving to solid food.

Death

This includes mourning your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, your friends, and your pets.

The list goes on and on. Unacceptable topics include:

Baby Loss

This includes miscarriages, blighted ovums, chemical pregnancies, stillbirths, burials for your child, memorials for your child, or the surgery that you were forced to have when your child died.

And that's it. The list is remarkably shorter, isn't it?

I just hope that none of you have to deal with an employer that fails to try to understand a baby loss mommy's grief, and instead who spends a lot of time making sure that everything is getting done and making you feel bad if you are perhaps working a little slower than normal.

If you do, then my heart is with you, and feel free to rant away.

Stupid Situation #4: What Google Won't Tell Me About Babies

This afternoon I found out that I am a three time baby loss mommy. Our little one stopped growing between last week and this week, just like our second, this time after seeing a very healthy heartbeat. After any loss, one of the first questions we ask is, "Why?" We want to search for answers. We demand answers. Sadly, answers are few and far between. Neither Google or Wikipedia seem to have the answers to some burning questions of mine:

- Why is my meth using, mother of two that she doesn't take care of, whore of a neighbor about to have her third child? Is she more deserving than the rest of us, or does using meth and watching Jerry Springer help you conceive and keep babies?

- Why do I have to suffer watching all of my neighbors and co-workers get pregnant and get to keep their babies? I hear that having miscarriages and stillbirths are fairly common (after all, I've had two of one and one of the other), so why don't they seem to happen to anyone I know other than me? When's it my turn to keep one?

- Why were my three children taken away from me? Am I being punished? Is this supposed to make me feel stronger? Because I don't feel stronger, I feel broken.

- When's it going to get "better"? Because I am damned sick of people saying to me, "Don't worry, it will get better". I would like to ask when that is? It wasn't with the New Year, or the Chinese New Year. It wasn't with the Spring. The only thing that even felt a little better was that brief wonderful month where I felt hope again.

- When will I learn to smile again? The other day a coworker made a comment to another coworker about how my smile and my angry look were exactly the same. I said it's been a good year since I've known how to smile. Most days, I'm not entirely sure how to. I see it on my face, but real smiles are seen in the eyes.

- Who is that person in the photograph? You know, the picture before I started losing my children. The ones where I looked self-assured and like I was on top of the world. The one who was sure that she would have at least two children who she would spoil and teach and love.

So if anyone happens to stumble across answers to these questions, please let me know. Because right now, I'm floundering, and for a while I'll be learning how to pick myself up off the ground again. It will take time. How much time? Well, maybe Google can answer that one too.