8 years ago today

8 years ago today, I woke up on my friend's couch next to my then husband. We had to get up early and headed to the hospital. It feels like a dream now and I can't even tell you what I was thinking then. Even as we drove I didn't feel like I was miscarrying. I was spotting but that was about it, nothing big, no giant red flags or flashing lights. When we got to the hospital, we went to pre-op and they got me ready to go back. One moment I will never forget is when the nurse asked me to go pee in a cup and then went to do whatever test they do on it. I was talking to my friend when the nurse came back in and looks me dead in the eyes and asked, "Did you know you're pregnant?" Yep, the nurse who was getting me ready for my D&C just asked if I knew I was pregnant. I could have killed her. Instead, my friend calmly asked her if she knew what I was here for and the nurse looked at my chart and looked like someone just smacked her. I was in tears by this point and the nurse excused herself and sent in a new one.

When I woke up from surgery, a male nurse was standing next to me talking. I felt sick from the anesthesia, so he gave me some medicine for pain and my stomach. I felt like I was in a daze. My husband came back and after I was able to keep some food down, they let them take me home. The next few days were a complete haze. I don't think I took my husband to work or watched my niece for at least a couple days after. I was a mess, but after I physically healed, I made myself too busy. I had so much going on so I wouldn't think of what had just happened. After that my marriage dissolved quickly, we divorced less than 5 months later. I swore off ever having kids and started taking the pill religiously.

Getting so close

8 years ago today, we had out final ultra sound with Angel that confirmed that there was no heartbeat. In 5 days it will 8 years since I lost her.

The other day I was filling out paperwork for my rainbow for full day preschool and all I kept think was I should be enrolling my daughter in 2nd grade and I'm not. It's amazing how all the little things I do with my rainbow every day remind me of all I have missed with my angel.

My Angel and my Rainbow

My rainbow is about 4.5 years old now, so I figured he would be old enough to understand about his angel sister. I bought him the book "Someone Came Before You" By: Pat Schwiebert (Someone Came Before You) The book is mostly about a family who had a stillbirth, but since it doesn't come right out and say that, it works for a miscarriage as well. My rainbow keeps telling me that he wants another sister named Kaorie. I keep telling him that in a few years we will look into adopting a little sister for him, since I can't have anymore of my own. 

Since learning about his angel sister, my rainbow has been telling everyone we meet "Baby Kaorie died. Her heart stopped beating when she was in mommy's belly" He has made two women cry and quite a few people very uncomfortable. Talking about babyloss is very uncomfortable for a lot of people, but when a 4 year old tells you something like that it will pretty much stop you in your tracks. I don't want to tell him not to talk about when he feels the need, most of the time he says it, it's completely random. But the looks people give him and the fact that they look like he just cussed at them, I feel like might discourage him. I know that a lot of you will have many different views on this. I feel like I have spent so many years not talking about her, and not including her in our lives that now that my rainbow knows and understands, as much as a 4 year old can, that now is the time to include her in our lives. I know a lot of people will not be comfortable with this and since he is going to full day preschool in the fall, I need to kind of teach him to filter when and where and who he tells about her. I don't need to a call from his teacher telling me he taught the other students that babies die. That's completely up to their parents. I also don't want him to feel ashamed. 

Does raising a Rainbow ever get easy?

Helping Others

So two days ago, I accepted an invitation to be an Admin for a page of Facebook called "Let's talk about Miscarriage". For two days I have been trying to help people who have gone through miscarriages, and it makes me feel so horrible inside but so happy at the same time. I talked to a 21 year old today who lost her baby when she was 6 months along and she just wanted a baby so badly that she keeps having unprotected sex with her boyfriend who doesn't want kids right now. I understood her need to fill that void we all have, that one we feel like can go away with the birth of a child. But I couldn't help but be upset with this women tricking her boyfriend into a baby he didn't want. Not to mention all the STD's she could be exposing herself to by having unprotected sex for 4 years.
Then I realized who am I to judge this women. I tried for months to get pregnant, got pregnant, had a miscarriage and spent more months trying to get pregnant again to fill that void. It's a horrible void. Like it could swallow you whole and leave no trace of the person you were before your loss.

For mother's day, my mom and son bought me a necklace that says "A piece of my heart is in heaven" with what would have been my daughter's birthstone on it. They also bought me a family ring, that has my birthstone, what would have been my daughter's and my son. It's a beautiful ring and it means so much to me that my mom remembered when my due date was. It's amazing to me that she thought to add my daughter to it. Mother's day can be so hard on all of us, but my mom and son made mine a little easier.

My Loss and My Rainbow

In December of 2006, I got married to the man I had known since I was 10 years old. After our wedding, we didn't prevent a pregnancy, but weren't really planning one either. We figured if it happened, it happens and we'd be happy either way. In July of 2007, I found out I was pregnant. We were so excited. We went to the doctor right away, and found out I was 6 weeks along. A week later we had an ultrasound. It was all new to us, and the ultrasound seemed very impersonal to us, and we never received a copy of our little bug. The next day, my doctor called and said that they needed to do another ultrasound, but didn't really tell me why. Two days later we had another ultrasound, one of my friends who was pregnant with her second child at the time came with me. The look on her face the whole time worried the living out of me. She followed the tech out and came back 5 minutes later. She looked so sad, when I asked her what the tech said, she told me they really aren't supposed to say anything but told her that she needed to prepare me for a miscarriage. I was heartbroken. I was 19 years old and I knew about miscarriages, but I never thought it would happen to me. I figured you got pregnant and 9 months later you had a baby. I feel like I was so naive and had no right to even get pregnant. The next day my doctor called, he told me that my baby never grew, she died before she could live, and since my body seemed to reject the idea of a miscarriage they would have to do a D and C (dilation and curettage). http://americanpregnancy.org/pregnancy-complications/d-and-c-procedure-after-miscarriage/

On July 23rd, 2007 at 7am, we showed up at the hospital. I was a mess. My friend, her boyfriend, and my husband at the time we all with me. At one point a nurse asked me to pee in a cup, a few minutes later she comes back and asks me if I knew I was pregnant. I lost it. I cried until I couldn't breath, my friend kicked the nurse out and requested a new one. I sat in that room until they took me back thinking of all the things my child would never do. They took me back into the operating room pregnant, I woke up an hour later no longer pregnant. I felt like in that hour something had been taken from me. 

My husband and I tried for months after to get pregnant with no luck. I felt like it would never happen and I could also feel my marriage falling apart. We never talked about our daughter, about our child we should be having. We put it out of our minds and tried to move on and ended up moving apart from each other. In December of 2007, we got a divorced. I began to take birth control and swore I would never get pregnant again. 

In September of 2010, I had been seeing my current boyfriend since my divorced, I was going to CNA school and living my 20's up. On September 11th, 2010 I took a pregnancy test on a dare from a friend. She swore on everything I was pregnant and I swore I wasn't. I had been on the pill since my divorce and I figured since I had since a hard time getting pregnant before there was no way I was now. It didn't even take 3 minutes for two lines to pop up on that stick. I freaked. I told my boyfriend, crying and he didn't seem totally ok with it but was more worried about comforting me. Two weeks later I got an appointment at a midwife. It turned out I was already 11 weeks pregnant and that first week was a rush. We had to get all the first trimester testing done before I was into my second trimester. 

My whole very short pregnancy was a trip. We found out at the first ultrasound, that something was wrong with the baby's umbilical cord. They called it a high umbilical cord but no one could explain it to us. When I was 20 weeks, we saw a specialist doctor who said a C-Section would be the best way to get my son out since I broke my hip as a child and needed a replacement. Because of the baby's umbilical cord they wanted him out ASAP. He was born at 36 weeks and 6 days. After he was born, we learned that his umbilical cord was attached to the membrane around the placenta instead of the placenta itself. If my water had broke naturally, my son and I would have bleed out before making it to the hospital. They couldn't figure out why or how I carried my son to term, but told me that the likelihood of it happening again was so high they advised me to not get pregnant again.

Not only am I raising my rainbow baby as a single mom but I am raising the only living child I will ever have. This blog is to make sense of my thoughts on all of this and to encourage others to talk about rainbow babies and the children they have lose.