March is Pregnancy After Loss month. This is a month that we celebrate our pregnancies and birth after pregnancy of infant loss. A baby born after a loss is often referred to as a Rainbow Baby. At first, this is what I used to call my baby when I was pregnant, but now I have a love-hate relationship with calling him my Rainbow Baby.
When I was pregnant after my loss, I downloaded a pregnancy tracking app. I was more than paranoid and anxious throughout my pregnancy. When I signed up for the app, it asked me what I wanted to name the baby. Because I didn’t know the sex, I named (him) Rainbow.
Until my subsequent pregnancy after loss, I had never heard of the term “Rainbow Baby”, but I liked it. It was positive and I hadn’t had much of that since my twins’ death. As I got further along in my pregnancy I began to incorporate rainbows in his nursery, in his outfits, and I often referred to him as my Rainbow Baby.
I was still grieving my twins’ death. They were everywhere to me. But my living baby was my happiness. He was my pot of gold after the storm and at the bottom of the rainbow. My baby was going to survive. I held on to hope that he would be lucky and make it to the earth-side.
He arrived, healthy, strong, and beautiful beyond any imagination. My baby, my Rainbow Baby was absolute perfection and he was here. When we brought him home, he was wearing a custom onesie with a rainbow pattern, he had rainbow diapers, and his nursery had a few nods to rainbows. It was rainbow overload. When I look back at it now, it was ever-consuming.
After a while, my Rainbow baby and I grew attached to each other and the guilt began to rear is ugly head. My baby who had a name started his life in the shadows and past of his dead siblings. How would he feel growing up and knowing that he was “after” them.
Then began the love-hate relationship of calling him our Rainbow baby. When someone would mention the term Rainbow baby, I would correct them and remind them that he had his own identity. He is separate. My baby who I gave birth to after my devastating loss is a gift and an absolute blessing.
There is a place for the term Rainbow Baby, I whole-heartedly believe this to be true. This term of Rainbow brings hope and we pray for luck, especially after a a death. We need something to look forward to, something positive, something that brings us peace and love.
But I want to be clear, his life has nothing to do with their deaths.
He WAS my rainbow after the storm. But now he’s my sunshine, my little lover, and life is so much brighter with him in it (and coincidentally, his name means happy-go-lucky).
If your little Rainbow Baby gives you peace and hope and you will continue to call your little sweet your Rainbow, I encourage you to do so. If you feel the same as me by having a love-hate relationship with the term Rainbow Baby, I’m good with that too. It’s a constant internal fight to understand and organize your feelings of having a baby after your child’s or children’s death. There is no clear answer. This is your path and your journey, I wish you peace and love as you find your way.
On my Instagram Page, someone messaged me and asked, “I’m confused….are you about food or about miscarriage?” I simply stated that while I was feeling my grief, I’ve learned to feed my soul.
Ask yourself, when someone dies, what do people usually offer? …. food.
OF course, sometimes it’s flowers, cards, gifts, but almost always people love to give food. I have found that food is a way of evoking sympathy and emotion without having to speak a word.
The History of giving food when someone dies
In the time of the Egyptians, when a loved one died, family members and friends offered bread, beer, and the deceased’s favourite meals to the tomb in which the person was being placed in. It was thought that even after death, the spirit needed to be nourished. In other traditions, bringing food to the grieving would ward off evil spirits and allow the deceased to rest in eternal peace. However, it began, it seems to be somewhat customary to show love and affection to a bereaved person when you bring them food.
What happened to me during my grief.
Cooking started to be a creative way that didn’t require me to be physically or emotionally present or have to bring my family into my dark place. I was able to nourish my family, show them my love, and bring my emotion for that day into my cooking. For example, a good day would be a fun meal like homemade pizza, chili dogs, chicken picatta. Whereas, a difficult day might look like a quick soup and grilled cheese, which is a tad less exciting for my family. During this time, I began to heal and take time for me.
Grief can mess with more than your emotions, it can also affect your appetite and your hormones.
According to Dr.Wendy Trubow, the stress of grief can have differing affects on your appetite. Grief can either increase your appetite or shut it down temporarily. This has to do with the fight or flight internal response. This affects not only your adrenals, but can alter emotional response as well. So often when someone is offering your food, they are taking from their own emotional space of grief, while offering you a space to nourish your soul.
Food can remind you of grief.
On the day of my D&C, my parents came to take care of me, and my husband. My dad doesn’t say much. I didn’t realize that I am more like him than I thought. Like me, he shows emotion through cooking.
I remember after my surgery, coming in and out of the anesthesia, he was busy in my kitchen. Finally, he came to me. He brought me a bowl of homemade Italian Wedding soup. As I think about this now, his offering of soup was like a warm hug. A place of refuge. Someway to take my pain away by filling my belly. It was a way for him to make me feel better. It was his way of offering me his sympathy. Now, Italian Wedding soup is my go-to when I am missing my babies, or when I need a warm hug from my daddy. I will be sharing his recipe with you soon.
After their death, my closest girlfriend brought me a meal of stuffed pasta shells. I remember when she dropped this off, my security doorbell camera notified me that someone was at the door. When I looked, she had dropped off the meal and ran away. Not a word. I knew that she didn’t want to see me in pain. Or maybe didn’t know what to say, but this meal was like a big “I love you” without the words. I knew what she needed me to feel.
Since their death, I have spent so many hours in the kitchen. Sometimes with my children and there are times where no one is allowed in that space with me. Depending on the day, this is what I need. In the kitchen, I am always in my thoughts where I can address my anxieties. It’s where I mourn my babies and count my blessings. I continue to process my grief and nourish my soul while I feed my family. This is a journey, and I am in it for the long haul.
New year’s eve doesn’t bring me excitement or even hope for the upcoming year, at least not like it used to. It’s not that I don’t have anything to look forward to, but it’s that I am one more year further from having my babies with me. I never understood grief to be this way. I had always heard that “time heals all” and it makes me cringe. I don’t believe this. I think it’s what someone with good intentions says when they don’t know what to say. I’m going into my fourth year of grief and I can tell you for certain that grief, trauma, and losing the lives that you love so deeply has not been healed. Walking into a new year doesn’t end the grief.
A little story
When I was a naïve 15 year old teen, my grandmother had passed away. We were close. I admired her. Her death was unexpected and it was the first time that I had anyone close to me die. A month later, brought New Year’s eve 1998, moving into 1999. My extended family always got together over the holidays. We always had too much food, the parents usually had too much “fun” and it was a time to have a fun sleepover with my cousins.
So that year, we went to my grandfather’s home (today he is almost 97!) and I remember when it was close to midnight, we all congregated into the den to ring in the new year. I was excited, “A new year means a new start”. Then I noticed that my aunt was crying. She left the room. Being the empath that I was, I was concerned but mostly confused. So I asked my mom why she was crying. My mom (who is very wise), explained that she is moving into the new year and it’s the first time she is going without her mother.
That hit me like a ton of bricks. I felt so stupid to not understand what that had meant. A new year doesn’t mean a new start. Grief doesn’t end when a new year begins.
So in further New Years, I was very cognizant of this and it always brought me back to that memory.
“…Then I got it”
I never fully grasped that feeling until the New Year’s 3 months after my babies died. Then, I really got it. I feel like I understand what my aunt could have been going through it. Maybe it wasn’t the same, maybe it was similar, maybe she was in a whole different place than me. But I was in it, I was so deep in my grief that it was consuming my all-being and going into a new year was not going to change that.
I remember that we had all gathered at my parents’ house. My son had not had time to process the grief that a 5-year-old could acted out at the dinner table. My brother-in-law scolded my son, embarrassed him, embarrassed me, and I and I completely lost it. I couldn’t come back from that moment to enjoy myself. It pushed my emotions to places I didn’t know existed. So when we were close to midnight, physically nauseated, I excused myself. I was in the washroom, hyperventilating while crying a deep sorrowful cry. Unsure how I had made it these past few months and unsure how I could make it another year.
My attempts to help people understand my regret for the years past and the creation of anxiety for the future remains difficult to explain and perhaps difficult to understand. Until, perhaps, it’s a lived experience.
Sometimes other grieving mother’s say what you can’t…
Without having the right words, I came across this quote from another grieving mother:
“Some people may not understand why those grieving are reluctant to move into a new year. For them, they see a fresh year, a new season…but for the bereaved, it’s moving into a new calendar year which their loved one will never reside in.” Zoe Clark-Coates
In the years ahead…
Can following years bring joy and excitement? I think so. Can you find happiness after a part of you dies? I still think so. Can you still grieve and miss the future that you could have had? This is it….YES!
If you are reading this and you are the bereaved, I hope you feel understood. If you are reading this and you know someone who is grieving, I hope to bring you some understanding.
As much as we as bereaved mothers and parents want to look at the new year as a new start, we sadly recognize that a new year doesn’t end our grief.
So even though time does not heal all wounds, time just might make the sorrow slightly more bearable.
I wish you peace in your journey. I wish you love in 2021 <3
There are specific days, memories, or events that seem to conjure up a memory that seems to bring me moments of peace. The one I am going to tell you about is pretty unusual. This is a story of a time when two grieving mothers found each other.
In November of 2017
It was less than 2 months after the death of my twins. I was not in a great place. But I did my best to put one foot in front of the other and to still be there, be present for my son. It was right before Remembrance Day (also known as Veteran’s Day for my American friends) and my county museum displays a marker for each person who was lost in service during any of the combats that Canada had participated in. There are over 200 markers on the lawn of our museum and archives.
I feel that it is especially important to teach my son about the sacrifices that have been made and are continually made so that we can live peacefully in our beautiful country.
He was newly five years old at the time and we walked through the rows of markers. We paid our respects and had a meaningful conversation about what it means to be in the forces in the past and currently.
As we were walking, I noticed that there was a woman standing at a marker. She looked to be in her late fifties, maybe sixties. For some reason I saw her. I kept looking at her. I wondered about her. As we walked closer, I saw her. Like I really saw her. Her face, it looked like mine, just defeated. Obvious signs of grief covered her face. I knew those cry lines, I recognized the puffy eyes, I could see past those dark sunglasses that she was hiding tears. I felt her crushing pain. She was grieving.
As we got closer, she began to smile. She smiled at my son and sparked up a conversation. My little oblivious five year old began to tell her about the markers he had found and spoke about guns and tanks (because what five year old doesn’t think that’s cool). She was so kind and expressed interest in what she was saying. She then began to tell my son about her son. He was in the war and when he was small, he wanted to be in the army. My boy was listening…like really listening. He then asked, “Is he still in the war?”. Her face softened and she knelt to his level, I remember her saying as she pointed to the marker “see this?”, my son nodded. “This is his name. He never came home”.
Those words hit me in the gut. I couldn’t hold back. I began to cry. No, I began to sob. She put her arms around me and said “I’ve been watching you walk down these rows. I don’t want to pry, but you look very sad”. My son piped up, “my mom misses our babies”. I nodded and I told her about my story. As I was telling her about my babies, she began to cry. She pulled me in for a hug, held me and said, “no matter how old or how young our babies are, they’re always our babies”.
By this time, my son was getting anxious to keep moving. I thanked her and thanked her son for the ultimate and devastating sacrifice. With a smile, she said she was grateful for this memory and I agreed. It was one more quick hug, and we parted ways.
When grieving mothers find each other, it makes life a little more bearable.
I am not sure if this was some magnetic forcefield of grief that brought us together or something else, but on that day, we needed each other.
I am not sure if this was some magnetic forcefield of grief that brought us together or something else, but on that day, we needed each other. This was a time when two grieving mothers found each other, a time that made the grief feel just a bit more bearable, even just for a moment.
I am forever grateful for this day. I am so grateful for that moment. That day we grieved together. We finally felt understood. She gave me something I had never had but always needed. I think of her and her son every November. I thank them both for the gift of that day.
Death cannot be compared. Grief cannot be compared.
My babies’ death will always be mine. For as long as I am alive, my miscarriage will always be my biggest loss.
The way I see it, grief is like a snowflake. There are similarities but there is no two the same. Grief is a slow descent; it hits the warm ground melting into a water droplet creating space. But sometimes the water freezes making it difficult to move, becoming stuck like ice. So this is my grief , it’s the ice, and it’s stuck.
Pain is not meant to be compared, it’s meant to be shared
-Ashley Stock
I saw a quote from another grieving mother on Instagram, her name is Ashley Stock. She lost her three year old daughter, Stevie to DIPG, a form of relentless cancer. In an Instagram post she writes, “Pain is not meant to be compared, it’s meant to be shared”. This struck a huge chord in me because she’s right! I have a right to be in pain. It’s ok for me to grieve. I don’t need permission to be sad over my twins’ death. I want to share my story. They mattered, so did their deaths. It all matters when we walked down this path of parenthood that didn’t happen on the earthside. We have to stop comparing our grief.
For so long, I had guilt about missing my babies and compared my grief to other stories. I buried it. I always wondered, “how can I hang on to pain for so long when I didn’t feel them?” , “people must think I’m crazy because I talk about them so much”, “maybe they’re right, I am lucky I wasn’t too far along”. But then I come to and realize that thinking that way is crap. Complete and utter crap. We shouldn’t compare our losses because we should be comforting each other. Comparing a loss is just cruel. It’s minimizing life. It’s lessening the importance. Regardless, if your miscarriage happened at 3 weeks or 30 weeks, that child is loved, wished for, dreamed of, and so important.
I have a right to grieve. It’s ok that I will never get over my children dying before me. I should be able to talk about my miscarriage and not worry about comparing another miscarriage and wondering “oh, they had it worse off than me”. It’s this type of thinking that’s toxic and I am over it. I should be able to miss the four hands I never got to hold. The two voices I never heard. The two faces I didn’t get to kiss. This is what I miss. It is what I grieve. This is my loss.
My story is mine. It is unique.
My hope for you is that you give yourself permission to cry and find the opportunities to miss your child or children. I hope that you grieve your loss as long as you need to. I really hope that you stop comparing your grief. Stop comparing your sadness to mine, to someone else’s, or allow anyone to minimize your loss. Your grief and your loss matters. Feel it, embrace it, and heal with it. Use your experience to do some good in our world.
This is your story. It is unique.
A Short Story
I am going to tell you why my miscarriage matters.A few weeks ago, I was out for a walk with my 8-year-old and 1 year old. An elderly neighbour couple stopped us, and we spoke for a while. After several minutes of talking about my boys (older people love talking about the kids), they asked me about the age between my boys. They continued to ask why there was such a large age gap. I always dread these questions. I take a deep breath and tell them that we lost twins in two separate miscarriages.
They looked at me with empathy. Almost, embarrassed and unsure of what to say next…or so I thought.
I thought that would be it for the topic, but then came the dagger, “….how far along were you?” I let out a big sigh and though I didn’t need to, I explain that we suspect 8 weeks for our first baby, and we estimated 10 weeks for the second twin. She replies “oh, that’s good you weren’t far along”. It felt like a lightning bolt sending a shock through my body. I can feel myself get fired up with anger. I take a deep breath unsure if I wanted to scream, walk away, or explain myself. In that moment, I chose to end the conversation…though I wanted to tell them my painful story.
My Miscarriage Matters
My miscarriage matters, despite what she thinks. Despite what anyone thinks. My babies were special. They were loved. They mattered.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time this situation has happened to me. In fact, it happens often that my miscarriage isn’t important because I wasn’t “that far along”. You know what, screw you and your opinions. Because, I. DON’T. CARE. ANYMORE.
My miscarriages happened. It happened to ME! They happened a week apart. There was pain, there was devastation, there was hurt, there was heartbreak. There was trauma. Don’t YOU tell me, “at least you weren’t that far along” as if your words are going to make me magically feel better, because you know what, they actually make me feel one hundred times worse!
I wonder if her reaction or sympathy would have been different if my babies were further along?
My babies had heart beats…both of them. Then one didn’t. Then a week later, they both were gone.
If You Want to Say Something…
So here is what I really want to say, if you are reading this and haven’t gone through a miscarriage, please don’t ask the gestation of their loss. Be there for her. Listen to her story. Tell that mom that she is so strong. Don’t make it about you or your comfort. Don’t try to justify the loss or death. Just listen. Be empathetic. Offer a hug. Show compassion.
If you have suffered a loss and someone asks your gestation, ask them if it matters? Tell them what you need. Or don’t say anything at all. I have learned that people don’t respond well when they don’t know what to say. Or when they are put on the spot and don’t have an answer. People want reasonings and justifications. But most of all they want to fix it. I usually tell people that my babies were loved so much. Even if I only had 2 months with them, the love my family and I have for them is enough for a full lifetime. When my time is up earthside, I know that they will be waiting to greet me at the gates of heaven.
Please know that your miscarriage matters. Even if it happened twenty years ago, it mattered. If it happened yesterday, it mattered.
It will always matter.
Can we talk about post-partum after you lose a baby in pregnancy? I mean, how do you live after the loss of a baby?
When I was home after my losses, I found NOTHING on the internet that was remotely helpful when going through the post-partum grief. NOTHING. Friends or family didn’t know what to tell me. Or what they said wasn’t what I needed.
It was extremely frustrating. I knew that millions upon millions of other women have gone through similar experience, yet no one wants to talk about it. Well, I’m going to talk about it.
Let’s talk about the hormones
Let’s talk about the pregnancy hormones for a second…despite losing one of my two babies; I was still pregnant with my second baby. Pregnancy hormones + grief. Let’s try an organize that first. But wait, I was told and I knew that this second baby wasn’t going to survive, so let’s throw on a dash of hopelessness and a sprinkle of hope that the doctors are wrong! Let’s see what happens. Then, I was encouraged to stay calm, stay positive, stay healthy for baby number two…which they had already told me wasn’t going to survive. Talk about being absolutely confused in a place of already immense confusion.
Then my second baby died.
Here come the post-partum pregnancy hormones crashing down on an already overwhelmingly, oversaturated, immense feeling of guilt, grief, and shame.
It is so messed up. There I was, bleeding, crying, cramping, doing all the things that a woman who has just delivered a baby does. Then comes the leaking of the breasts. The hair loss (yep, that still happens). Then those post-partum hormones do a nose-dive. It was exactly like I had delivered baby, but without the babies.
Here’s what happens next…
Then about 4 weeks after that, Flo shows up. Yep, she’s a bitch! So just before that I was PMS’ing hard! You know, trying really hard to see how good things are, when really it’s complete shit!
By this point, my body doesn’t know up from down. I went from pregnancy highs and hormone lows, to grieving a baby and hanging on to hope for the survival of #2, to then post-partum hormones with the loss of two babies, to getting my period about a month that the ordeal began.
Riding the wave of emotion
To this day, I’m not sure how I walked out of it. What I want from writing about this is for anyone who has had to go through or is going through this to know… it sucks. This whole up and down wave riding sucks! Let it suck. Don’t let anyone tell you “it’s for the best”, or “you’ll get over it”, or whatever other “reasoning” someone wants to say to make themselves feel better… the roller coaster of emotions is real and it sucks!
Feel it.
Live it.
Survive it.
Once you come out of it, you will be a new person. What that looks like, I’m not sure. I just need you to read and know that it’s real. But mostly, you aren’t alone….YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE! I am proof that you can live after the loss of your baby. It may not feel like you can, but yes you can and you will!
