After two back to back miscarriages, I was overwhelmed by the thought that it would keep happening. I was terrified of getting pregnant again, even though it was what I wanted more than anything. Even so, I felt so broken that I couldn’t imagine having a rainbow baby would ever heal the pain of the two I lost. I couldn’t imagine ever feeling whole again.
So when I became pregnant for the third time in one year, I was hesitant to even be happy for myself. I didn’t squeal and run out to my husband like I did the first time I was pregnant. I didn’t smile then remind myself that something might go wrong. Instead I looked at the test for a long time and cried, frustrated that I didn’t feel joy anymore.
The truth was, even as my pregnancy progressed, I had a hard time coming around to feeling happy. I was drowning in anxiety, trying to distance myself from my pregnancy as if it would stop the pain if something were to happen – even though I knew it would still hurt just as badly. I wanted some sort of guarantee that things would be all right – a guarantee I obviously couldn’t have.
A few weeks in, I started bleeding and calmly asked my husband to take over making dinner, informing him I was having another miscarriage. I sat next to him on the couch, certain I was losing the baby. I was still drowning in grief from my last two miscarriages, I didn’t know how I would deal with another. I cried, but mostly felt the emptiness left from my last two miscarriages growing, compounding, threatening to swallow me whole.
When I woke the next morning the bleeding had stopped. I went to my midwife and there on the ultrasound was my baby – heart still beating. It did little to ease my anxiety, but I was relieved nonetheless. This baby was alive, and he remained alive. I made it past the first trimester, entered into my second, then my third.
I passed the due date of the first baby who wasn’t born, then the second. I felt happy, finally, that I was pregnant with a healthy baby, but I felt like nothing would ever heal the wounds left by the two I had lost. My miscarriages hung over my head, a dark reminder of the two storms before my rainbow baby.
However, when he was finally born and the anxiety of pregnancy was finally behind me, I was able to see why he was called a rainbow baby. He was a bright and shining light that brought color back into my world. I had spent so long in the fog of grief that it was hard to imagine a day when I would be able to see clearly again, but as soon as he entered the world I could finally look toward the future with joy. Everything after my miscarriages had been tinted with sadness, even my pregnancy. He was able to bridge the unfathomable gap over my sorrow and make me happy, truly happy, again.
I felt like I was given back the piece of my heart that had been lost over the past year and a half since my first miscarriage. It was scarred now, but I had it back, I was finally whole again.
I still lament the loss of the two babies before him. I will never stop wondering what might have been if I hadn’t lost one or the other. I will never lose the scars they left on my heart. But I know now that I will never feel broken in that same way. My rainbow baby healed me, showed me how to love and feel true joy again. He has shown me that even the most impossible pain can fade in the face of love – a love that is stronger than I ever dreamed possible.