“… you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.”
Or a lot of it.
Life’s a bit of a storm, we all have different challenges. The bad bits can seem disastrous in a way that we may feel we will never recover.
But rainbows do come. Little reprieves from the turbulence we’ve withstood. They don’t negate our experience or take away from the difficulty of the downpour, but they do give us time to feel blessed, to look back and understand the rain a bit better.
I love my little rainbow girl. She has shown me just how blessed I truly am.
But in some ways this rainbow has reminded me just how challenging my journey though my life’s tempests has been.
In writing out my “birth story” for Kate, it brought a lot of memories back from the birth of Matix and Tegan. The day I learned that they were no longer living was one of the most challenging days of my life, and the hours in labor and the weeks following were a hurricane of grief and soul searching.
I’ve faced many other storms in the navigation of grief since then… The years of trying, the not-quite-rainbow-baby miscarriage, and the every day struggles… my pregnancy with Kate even. All of those necessary gusts and gales bringing me to where I am now- facing more showers, except now I’m armed with better understanding, and a bright little rainbow too.
Living with a newborn these days has been just what I’d wished and prayed for for nearly two years… Sleepless nights, poopy diapers, misunderstood crying, baby coos and cuddles, and a lot of what-ifs and questions.
I have on too many occasions to count wondered how I would have managed TWO newborns at once. How would I have lived day to day with two little boys needing to be fed, burped, changed, rocked… How a younger me would have coped with little sleep or mystery crying.
And on even more occasions than that I have let my mind wander to think of how two little 2 and a half year olds would react to having a baby sister. How would I mother two toddling boys AND a newborn?
But more important than all the hows is the whens… When one day, (distant but evident,) our family can be reunited, when Matix and Tegan’s bigger little sister can know her brothers, and when I can raise my sons.
Kate also brings up another bit of bereavement for me.
With every week that passes, my baby is learning and growing, hitting these milestones that make my mama heart soar then sink… The weeks and months following the boys’ birth were riddled with my “would-be-milestones” and the wonders of where they’d be at each different point.
Experiencing those things now with my beautiful Kathleen is healing and wistful at once.
Sadly, the anxiety of pregnancy after a loss is not completely dispelled with the successful delivery of a rainbow either.
Pregnancy loss taught me that you cannot take anything for granted.
One of the things that is a mixed blessing and burden of being a loss mama is knowing all the other loss mamas, and therefore knowing their stories. This means not only do I personally know a pile of women who are grieving like me, but some of them didn’t loose their babes during any time of pregnancy, but lost their little ones after a live and even healthy birth. SIDS, accidents, or many other tsunamis are a reality that can change life all at once.
Like I wrote before, “…This rainbow pregnancy is a blessing, and a difficult trial at the same time. It is not something we expected, and the baby I’m growing, whom we anxiously await and love, is also not an expectation I hold. I am pregnant. But I am not expecting. That kind of thinking is a luxury I didn’t miss until it was long gone. I cannot expect any certain ending to these next long months, all I can do is trust in the Lord and move forward in faith.”
And so I share and say have faith.
Let your rainbow prove your blessings and keep your strength through your daily deluge.
“I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born.” {Isaiah 66:9}
Press on.
Living Lemonade 