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Radios & Rattles – The Rainbow Baby

******Trigger warning. Today’s blog speaks about pregnancy loss, grief, and other matters & emotions some may find hard to read or uncomfortable.*****************

 

 

 

When I woke up this morning I wondered what to blog about today. The nursery progress? How the pregnancy is progressing? Then I opened up Facebook and the 1st thing I saw was a post from one of the groups I’m a part of reminding FB land that October is pregnancy loss awareness month.

I knew then, THAT was what I wanted to write about.

Fair warning, while I will not go into some of the harder details, please understand I’ve lived through this and I hope this can reach someone who may be going through a loss and isn’t quite sure how to cope with it as it has been such a taboo subject that I would like to see spoken about more often. Not in horrific detail, but more of an acknowledgement that it’s hard, it’s emotion, traumatizing and sometimes it’s ok to not be ok.

Let me take you back to 2013…to the child to who made me a ‘Mom’.
It was fall, my husband and I were overjoyed to find out we were expecting a baby! At Thanksgiving we told our families and began moving things around our tiny 2 bedroom apartment trying to figure out where the crib should go, do we want to find out the gender, picking out tiny onesies to stockpile, thinking of names, had our first OB/GYN visit, heard the heartbeat…all the things typical parents do.

In January of 2014 we went for our routine visit around the 3 month mark…and things got quiet. The doctor turned to us and said “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat”. I will never, ever forget those words. That day, that moment changed me forever is so many ways. Up until that moment there was such joy and bliss, (which is why with this pregnancy I’ve had such a hard time letting go being a typical happy pregnant lady)…after that it’s a bit of a blur.

I had a miscarriage.

That day changed me for the rest of my life. How I looked at the world, how I interacted with people, my vocabulary, even my marriage. I remember tears, pain (physical and emotional) and just not feeling like myself. Truth is, I never really was the same after that. I’ll spare you the details of what happened after that appointment as it may not be for everyone to hear. But I will say it was difficult, physically and mentally to deal with.

The days following I was in a fog. I was pregnant one day…and not the next. How? What did I do? The answer was nothing. I did nothing wrong. That’s something that women don’t hear enough. For the next few days I was on the couch, resting, my dear husband running to McDonalds to get me the occasional hamburger to keep calories in my system as I had zero appetite and was really sick.

We named that child Prentiss Des Anges. We loved the name Prentiss and Des Anges is French for ‘of the angels’ (and my mother pointed out that D and A takes my husband and my initials). Prentiss is the baby that made me a Mom. Every day I think of my baby, who he or she would have looked like, personality…my husband and I talk of our 1st child often and it helps us to cope.

Then I began to spiral. Wasn’t diagnosed with situational depression and anxiety until much later that year. I was a shell of the person I used to be. Not living…just existing. I tried a therapist, talking to people, but found there are SO MANY who either don’t want to talk about it or don’t understand. I remember trying to explain it to my mother who desperately wanted to see me happy again and to understand. I said to her imagine myself or my brother hear one day and gone the next. She said “That’s horrible!” to which I replied, “Exactly”.

I said things I regret, skipped church (which is shocking for anyone who really knows me), stopped caring about things I used to, it destroyed me and nearly destroyed my marriage as well. My husband and I had a hard time communicating how we were feeling and coping because we were coping and healing in different ways, but he never left my side, held my hand and my head as tears streamed down my face in the middle of the day for no reason at all.

Pregnancy loss effects 1 out of 4 women. That number shocked me and maybe it shocked you, too. It wasn’t until I found a support group that specialized in pregnancy loss that I truly began to heal. I learned there are women and families going through the same thing. I unfortunately went through it twice. Once at 11-12 weeks the other at 6.

It’s ok to not be ok. It’s ok to cry, it’s ok to be mad, it’s ok to feel empty…it’s ok. Grief is hard and when it comes to losing a pregnancy, it’s especially hard. Over the past 5 years I’ve learned to cope with the grief. It never really goes away, it just becomes easier to carry as time goes by. With this pregnancy when people ask ‘Is this your first?’ sometimes I say yes…sometimes I say no and explain depending on how I’m feeling. That’s why if you see me on a day by day basis I’m just Amanda who happens to be pregnant and who is trying very hard to be happy and carefree about the whole process.

This child is what is called my Rainbow Baby. A rainbow baby is a child born after a pregnancy loss or stillbirth, because a ‘rainbow after a storm: something beautiful after something scary and dark.” I was overjoyed when we received many gifts with rainbows on them and had a rainbow displayed at our shower.

If you want to understand what this process of healing and coping is like, watch the powerful movie with Minnie Driver ‘Return to Zero’. The scene where she smashes the pottery in the store…I’ve been there, I’ve felt like that.

If you are coping with a loss…please consider these facebook groups:

https://www.facebook.com/miscarriage

 

 

If you are coping with loss and need to talk to someone in person about how you are feeling (consider professional counseling first) but there are some great groups under ‘grief’ listed HERE through UVM medical’s site.

 

 

 

I am…1 in 4

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