Rainbows and shit

In the world of **fertility, a baby you conceive after a loss (the storm, if you will) is a "rainbow baby." The amazing miracle of beauty that follows the shitty thunderstorm.

I hate this terminology. I don't want a "rainbow baby," I want a real-life, 100% true, no additives or preservatives, take-home baby.

However, I have a friend, B, who told me (soon after we just met our freshman year of college) that her mother had a miscarriage 2 months before she got pregnant with B. From riding Space Mountain at Disneyland, actually. But her point was that B -- in all her wonder and glory -- wouldn't exist if the miscarriage had never happened. (I think the story was told in an effort to promote "good things come from bad things," probably related to a boy or something).

This thought is actually somehow reassuring to me. When I do get pregnant again (not "if," but "when"), and have a healthy baby, it will be a baby that I never would have had if I didn't miscarry.  The embryo from my loss was never meant to be -- even without testing, I like to assume it was never viable.  But it served a purpose, in enabling me to have the child I will one day have.

Today it is 3 weeks and 2 days since I knew I was having a miscarriage.  I knew I was pregnant for 3 weeks and 3 days.  By this weekend, I will have dealt with my loss longer than I dealt with being pregnant.  That is actually shocking to me, since I feel like the miscarriage happened yesterday and that I was pregnant for a long time.

The saddest part to me about having a loss with my first pregnancy is that the shiny, magical, incredible feeling of being pregnant will never happen to me again.  When I get pregnant again, I will be stressed out from the very beginning -- waiting to get blood results and ultrasounds, hoping that this time I have symptoms to reassure me that all's well, checking every time I pee for any signs of spotting. I won't be downloading pregnancy apps and signing up for bump email updates. I won't be tracking as my embryo goes from a poppy seed to a blueberry.  Until I at least make it past where I was this time, I probably won't be able to even take a deep breath.

Doesn't mean everything was glory and amazing the first time -- remember, I'm superstitious, and I've seen all the bad things that can happen with a pregnancy. I wasn't planning to tell anyone until 9 weeks (mom) and 13 weeks (everyone else). I wasn't planning to have one single baby item in our home until after the baby was born healthy.  But now it'll be even more severe. I don't even want to think about it.

Dark and stormy roads ahead, for sure.  I am a firm believer in rainbows in general -- I always look for one after a storm and say the blessing that reminds us of G-d's covenant when I find one. But I just can't refer to any subsequent baby as a rainbow. It'll just be mine. For keeps.