Rainbow Baby

Declan is our rainbow baby. He's the baby that followed the loss of our first pregnancy. A rainbow is the beautiful, amazing, special symbol that brings hope after a storm. A miscarriage is a storm; a dark, scary period of uncertainty, when dreams have been washed away. Declan has most certainly been our rainbow. Every single day of his life he's brought unimaginable joy, hope, and love into our lives Calling him a rainbow baby is a perfect image of what he truly is.

Last Friday I was at the doctor to discuss the infection in my knee that I've been struggling with for the past 6 weeks. My doctor suggested trying a different antibiotic and asked if I was pregnant. I told her no. She wanted to know if I was certain, as the antibiotic would be very harmful. She did a test and it turned out I was pregnant. My immediate reaction was one of uncertainty and dread. Would I suffer with the horrible hyperemesis I experienced with Declan? How would I care for him? Would Declan hate his mommy as I lay on the couch throwing up day after day? As I began to process everything, I knew we would come up with a way to handle all of this, we would make it through.

When Brad got home from work Friday night I told him the news and he was thrilled. We spent the weekend with family, thinking about our secret and dreaming of how this time maybe we could tell our family and friends I'm pregnant, not vomit days on end and telling them the news while holding a puke bucket in front of my face (news they had already figured out, too).

Monday night, after a wonderful day on the island with my brother, I started to not feel very well. I woke up just after midnight and began violent vomiting and diarrhea. My first reaction was "no! Morning sickness cannot start now!" I began to realize this was not morning sickness as the vomiting and diarrhea continued. Declan and Brad both woke up with it as well. All three of us were miserable and I knew I was in serious danger of dehydration. By mid morning I couldn't sit up and was vomiting even small sips of water. Late in the afternoon, my parents left a care package of juice and popsicles on our front porch. After 6 that night I was finally able to keep down a popsicle. It was about that time that I stumbled into the bathroom and realized I was having a miscarriage, again. This time I was only about 4 weeks along, so the pain wasn't nearly as much as it previously had been at 10 weeks. I laid on the floor and cried as Brad and I realized that our dreams had literally just gone down the toilet.

That's what a miscarriage is: it's losing a dream. The minute we got pregnant, the dreams start, and they can also end just like that. That's why miscarriage is so hard to talk about, not because it's something "wrong," but because loss like this is so incredibly HARD and REAL. And to be honest, unless you've experienced the loss, you really don't "get it."  Do we lose hope when we lose our dreams?  As I say goodbye to this dream, I hold tight to my rainbow baby and wonder: will there be another rainbow? Can our hopes, dreams and hearts handle the possibility of another loss on the way to a rainbow?

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