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.