Our rainbow baby

I love all my four boys to the ends of the earth, but my second youngest is our rainbow baby, and that’s kinda special.

Before we were lucky enough to welcome him into the world we had suffered two heartbreaking losses back to back. I didn’t think there was a worse pain than a miscarriage just as you had begun to get your head around your new pregnancy, but I was naive to the agony that awaited as less than a year later in 2015 I lost our next baby, a boy – Jack, at 18 weeks and 5 days. My heart was broken but my arms ached to hold a baby, I felt guilty at the time that I yearned so much for a baby, I thought it was selfish and that I wasn’t acknowledging my lost babies. But now I realise that this is quite common for Mums when a miscarriage or stillbirth has happened, and my reaction was not selfish at all.

I felt like I was being punished, why me? Why does this keep happening? Can my body not carry babies anymore? I had two little boys and couldn’t take a third to term.

Early 2016, those two little lines. I should have been jumping up and down with excitement but I wasn’t, I was terrified. How is it possible to want something so badly and be terrified when you get it?

I had a yellow highlighter in the kitchen, and at the end of every day I struck a line through the date on the calendar, to mark another 1 day pregnant. Every. Single. Day.

I didn’t tell our families, I confided in my friend who is a midwife and my sister only, she knows everything in my life, every bit of good news, bad news, all my worries, fears and plans. She kept my secret. I think I was around 28 weeks when I told my Mum, and then I published a blog post shortly after.

I continued to mark the calendar every day, and telling people made me anxious. Perhaps I was suffering some sort of post traumatic stress, I definitely had anxiety issues and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way after a loss.

We eventually welcomed Ethan at 38 weeks in the October of 2016, and although he couldn’t take away the pain that preceded him, he goes a long way to heal the hole in my heart.

My rainbow baby.