And finally, there she was. My daughter. Just after nine o’clock in the evening, midway through a strong push, sweet Noa Raye came into the world, curious and calm, and mere hours after a rainbow so fortuitously glowed outside the window of my hospital room. My rainbow baby. Here. Safely. The little being who’d spent the preceding nine months growing, thriving, and kicking about inside my body. I’d spent those months in varying degrees of unrelenting fear, but within moments of catching her and bringing her to my chest, the energy swirling inside me began to shift. I exhaled. Not all the way, of course. What I’d lived through to get here was as poignant and real as ever before.
Immediately following her arrival, Noa snuggled up on my chest and began suckling. I was in awe of her. I lay back on the hospital bed, my girl cozy in my arms, and drank in this surreal moment: her vernix-covered body, the sound of her breath as I fondled her little toes, and the fact that I’d actually made it to the other side of pregnancy.
About thirty minutes after Noa’s arrival, the nurse brought her from my arms over to the counter to be weighed and measured. Suddenly, I was propelled back into a state of fear. I couldn’t hear Noa. “Is everything okay?” I asked, panicked as the nurse weighed her. “I can’t hear her. Why can’t I hear her? Is she okay?”
Even though Noa had made it earthside, my angst pressed on. In fact, it instantaneously morphed into something else altogether.
“She’s just taking it all in,” the nurse said lovingly. “She’s just looking around. Calm as can be.”
Gobsmacked by these feelings, I was truly taken aback that I was not in the all clear of these exhausting concerns, but I gently reminded myself to breathe. She’s here, on loop, she made it. These compassionate thoughts rivaled the discordant refrain of what-if what-if what-if that I had expected would be quieted upon her arrival.
I was suddenly face-to-face with the realization that yes, she’d made it through pregnancy and into the world safely—But how will I know if she’ll last?! It was unnerving to witness myself transferring the fear from pregnancy to newborn in real time: Maybe she was safer on the inside, I pondered. Perhaps the pregnancy worry was a waste after all, and what I should have been even more concerned about was her staying alive upon delivery.
I didn’t see this coming: the next dimension of trauma. What I’d have to see through experience was the fact that what I’d thought was the finish line was actually the start of another marathon altogether.
I’d heard stories about sudden infant death syndrome and rare, fatal diseases of babies within the four walls that make up my office, but only now did those narratives make their way into my bloodstream via cortisol, into my now-deepening well of worry.
• • •
As time went on and Noa grew little by little, the way I thought about my loss and the fragility of mortality morphed. With this darling daughter of mine earthside, I couldn’t help but study her in deep awe, marveling about the fact that this beautiful person wouldn’t have joined our family had my first daughter made it. Such a mind-bending, existential road I had found myself on.
Navigating motherhood in the wake of Noa’s birth was, for a time, excruciatingly uncomfortable. It was as if a piercing alarm bell had gone off and was ringing at a pitch no one could ignore: the sound was a constant reminder about the vulnerability of life. No amount of thick skin could be located. It was all just too raw. Anything can happen at any time, I’d think. Where had my capacity for denial gone? It was one thing to parent Liev after my loss, but now with two little ones underfoot and a world of angst brewing inside, I struggled to maintain a sense of calm.
In those years when Liev was our only child, I was free of this great worry, but now, with two lives to raise and protect (and the loss under my belt), I found myself deluged by hypervigilance—deeply porous and more anxious than I’d ever been before. The cacophonous symphony of what-ifs was a constant, and fear-based thoughts popped in at inopportune times. Autopilot and denial eventually kicked in to help me master my days as a mother of two, but it took a while before I could quell the sound of those alarm bells that were ringing all too often, robbing me of the poise I’d had when I was a mother to one and no other. Post-loss motherhood: a whole different ball game.
• • •
As time moved forward and my feet steadied on the ground, I finally had the chance to fully relax—to unclench my teeth, release the morsels of antagonistic anxiety, and marvel at Noa’s existence in a state of peace. I fell hard in love with her, and Liev was taking his newfound role as big brother in stride. I was feeling much more like myself and was well into the swing of my clinical practice again. I was back in the saddle. But on occasion, something seemingly mundane would flip a switch, and I’d find myself thrust right back into that post-trauma, distressed state of mind. Seeing this in my patients was one thing—I knew how to reassure them that what they were feeling was, in fact, normal—but when it was me, knee-deep in flashbacks or flooded by anxiety, I had a difficult time deciphering up from down, left from right, what was real and what my anxiety was manifesting.
Our grief doesn’t dissipate overnight, nor are our feelings about what we’ve lost replaced by the overwhelming love of those resting safely in our arms. Life doesn’t replace death. It doesn’t need to, and it simply can’t. And since the existence of one child does not negate the loss of another, why does culture—with its wonted way of focusing on happy endings—demand that we turn our backs on our grief to serve our well-being? We needn’t succumb to this insidious unspoken pressure.
And so was the case with me. Noa’s arrival was a monumental turning point, but the months that preceded her birth were sullied by an awareness that anything could go wrong at any time, and my resulting worry that surely something would, even after she entered the world. Noa’s birth was pivotal and deeply healing in that sense, as was the subsequent opportunity to reflect on the fact that we’d made it through every single one of those harrowing weeks of her development, and that I’d done so without having to relive the horrors of what had happened to me such a short time ago. There’d been no blood, no early labor, no unassisted home birth, no traumatic loss. Instead, only the good, the predictable, and the expected transpired in that pregnancy and there in that hospital room. Noa’s birth was physically intense, of course, but I had welcomed the opportunity to feel every twinge of pain. I’d gotten the reparative birth experience I’d yearned for and trusted my body through it. This pain is purposeful. I had the chance to be present in mind and body with a positive outcome, the way I was when the outcome was bleak, with no choice in the matter. An outcome so confounding it is still hard to find the perfect words to sum up. This time was different.
One of the most insufferable and surprising parts of grief is that one moment we can’t stand to feel our sadness for another second, and the next we are scared of ever losing the intensity of that feeling. That somehow the passage of time, and the eventual lessening of the sting, is an affront to the memory of the one we lost. This thought pattern is common among the bereaved, but the dichotomy is even more intense after a pregnancy loss, because there are so few who knew the lost one—sometimes, of course, the pregnancy isn’t even known until after the loss occurs. To let go of grief can feel like letting go of memory, and if we alone bear the burden of those memories, that can be a terrifying thought. So then why not allow grief to stay, even as time moves forward and joy returns? The pain is purposeful. I learned that I didn’t have to choose.
In acknowledging that death is as big a part of life as birth, we recognize that sometimes intense gratitude and unconditional love commingle with fear, overwhelm, and angst. And in so doing, we let go of that strident, fantastical notion embedded in our culture that the birth of one baby somehow erases the complex feelings of having lost another. Replacement isn’t a thing when it comes to pregnancy and human beings. We find, then, that it’s imperative to extinguish the idea that the existence of good negates all that which has been painful in t
he past. Trauma is like tar, sticking to our innards, affecting so many things, from the way we physically move through our environment to the way we psychologically process the world. We must hold both. Even if we don’t feel capable of managing both, we can and we will.
Moving into this headspace ever so subtly changed the way I practiced as a therapist. I relished the three-month maternity leave: to bond with Noa, to foster a connection between my children as siblings, and to familiarize myself with my reformed mind, now mothering two. In that still-inchoate time—milky and sleep deprived as I was—I knew that steadying my anxious tremor was paramount to a successful return to the workforce. Clearly visible in my rearview mirror was the hasty return I had made after my miscarriage, and I wasn’t about to do that again. So I made sure not to rush. And I made sure to sink into this new life of mine—as a family of four—with the deep imprint of what had come before and the grief that was born of it.
• • •
When I made my way back to work, I felt well—a much-welcomed and marked distinction from the way I walked back in after my loss. Interactions with my patients felt measured, and I was back to being focused on their stories without a recent and similar narrative of my own hovering in the background.
Compared to the return following my miscarriage—that abbreviated moment where I hardly even took in what had happened—this time, in hearing their stories and sharing their grief, I felt sturdy. I felt encouraged and validated by the way my experience had changed me. My loss quite literally helped bolster my ability to understand and relate to my patients in ways previously relegated strictly to the theoretical. After Noa was born, sitting with my patients—no longer pregnant, with no plans to be again—I was able to sink into my work with aplomb. And, I noted, the fact that new patients meeting me for the first time would not have to encounter my burgeoning belly (or the chaos of my loss) no longer rendered me as a potential trigger for those walking through my door. This brought enormous relief. A new chapter was underway.
12
“Sometimes rainbows follow storms. Sometimes they don’t.”
My mother-in-law’s first pregnancy was smooth, much wanted, and a girl. Toward the end of her pregnancy, movement lightened. She told her doctor. He assured her that everything was okay. Upon giving birth, they learned that their darling daughter Chaya had spina bifida—a birth defect that occurs when the spine and spinal cord don’t form properly. She died within ten days, never having made it to her crib at home. Bereft, my mother-in-law shuffled through the subsequent months in a fog.
A year to the day of the birth of her daughter, she gave birth to twin boys. My husband was one of them. My wonderful Jason. I am married to a rainbow baby.
• • •
I wonder how many people are rainbow babies and don’t know it. Pregnancy loss is a quiet epidemic—a circumstance that too many sequester. Since research has given birth order so much weight, I think it would be fascinating to widen the scope to include rainbow babies and the losses that came before. To investigate the impact previous losses have on the way we survive the subsequent pregnancy (if there is one) and make our way into parenthood. Are these children then treated differently than they might have been had their parents not undergone such a profound disappointment, resulting in pain and fear?
• • •
Claudia was thirty-eight weeks along, awaiting the arrival of her rainbow baby, when we began talking about the fact that she hadn’t bonded with the baby in utero. Too scared to fall in love with the idea of actually raising this child, she held back. “What if she doesn’t actually make it?” she said on countless occasions. “I’ve got to protect myself from the potential pain of losing this baby too. I just don’t want to get too attached. Too close.”
I hear about similar declarations daily in my work, as women make their way toward parenthood with understandable trepidation. There are times when the fear looms so large it gets in the way of the mothers connecting with their babies. Their hopes are shy—tentative even—but typically exist nonetheless. The fear of loving and losing once more feels untenable. Claudia is a single mother by choice and became pregnant through insemination. Her previous pregnancy abruptly ended at the tail end of the first trimester: a missed miscarriage. She’d fallen hard for being pregnant, having always wanted to be a mother. To make matters more complex, Claudia desperately wanted to raise a son. Her heart was set on it, as she imagined raising a feminist boy who’d be a kind and fierce leader in the world, helping to change concepts of stereotypical and toxic masculinity in subtle but important ways. This was her vision for a boy; a boy who didn’t make it. Her loss was indeed a boy. Conflicted by feeling letdown upon learning her subsequent pregnancy was a girl, Claudia felt guilt burrow in, furthering the difficulty in bonding with her developing baby.
I’ve heard from many women about post-loss next-pregnancy “sex disappointment.” This is yet another aspect of loss that seems to be shrouded in silence—shame, even—because the response women typically receive when they share their disappointment is something along the lines of “you should just be happy this pregnancy is healthy” and “at least you were able to get pregnant again quickly.” We should be grateful. We should keep things into perspective. After all, things could be worse.
These dismissive statements often yield isolation and self-doubt, anger, guilt, or confusion. It’s common to, when and if we find out the sex of a fetus, to imagine raising that boy or girl: fantasies that often rely on outdated gender stereotypes and the lingering gender binary, sure, but can serve as a bonding exercise nonetheless. We see what we hope to one day experience, and in doing so feel closer to the life growing inside of us.
If one has fantasized about raising a son, like Claudia had, for example, is one not allowed to experience sadness at no longer having the chance for that imagined future to come to fruition? Shouldn’t parents be allowed to have and express their mixed emotions about this sensitive and deeply personal aspect of pregnancy and infant loss, and life after? Shouldn’t anyone who has experienced a loss be given the space, and grace, to continue to mourn a future that was only given a chance to exist in their mind?
Claudia was met with bewildering responses when she dared to share her sadness and anxiety around having a daughter. What’s worse is that some of these comments not only judged her disappointment in the baby’s sex, but also skimmed the surface of her fear around being pregnant after her loss. She’d try to talk with loved ones about her reticence of bonding in case this pregnancy were to go away, and with no exception, she would be met with flowery, oversimplifying platitudes. Statements that completely missed the point and even served to minimize her fraught experience of pregnancy. “But it’ll be different this time. Just be grateful.” A statement that landed with a crass thump each and every time. And so, Claudia quieted her manifold, legitimate feelings, which quickly led her to feel ashamed of them. Anger scaffolded and led to an isolation previously unknown. “I feel like some of these people also judge the fact that I’m choosing to have a baby on my own. My family is very supportive, but it’s been shocking that some of my friends think it’s an out-there idea.”
These same friends inadvertently misspoke after her loss as well—promising a concept that’s actually faulty and unfounded: “You’ll be okay, there’s always a rainbow after a storm!” Is there, though? We all know this is not an unequivocal truism. Born of hope, this sentiment is simply not something one can ensure and therefore, we do better to shy away from blanket statements like these that don’t always hold up. Perhaps people rely on these untruths in order to help themselves feel better amid the unknowns. In most instances, these declarations of certainty steeped in platitudes are well-meaning and the unavoidable outcome of people simply not knowing what to say in the lingering aftermath of loss. As a culture, we’re woefully ill-equipped to handle even the concept of death, let alone discuss it outright or linger in the myriad ways in which it shapes us. So, in the absence of understandin
g, people say hollow things with the best of intentions.
But shouldn’t they know better? Shouldn’t we, as those who have been touched, changed, born anew by loss, demand better? Don’t people know that rainbows don’t always follow storms? That sometimes, all that follows is destruction, mortality, and destitution?
Blindly relying on the comforting notion that every traumatic storm is followed by beautiful, awe-inspiring happiness is common within the pregnancy- and infant-loss community. But we all know this isn’t always the case. Some people don’t go on to get pregnant again. Some get pregnant and have yet another loss. Some stop trying to conceive altogether. So while this hopeful message is encouraging for some, it might feel alienating to others, and in ways that are not always obvious. So many of us require more than the promise of a happy ending. Alternative outcomes—outcomes that do not consist of full-term pregnancies and babies wrapped in rainbow-colored blankets—deserve to be acknowledged too.
It’s more inclusive and in fact more accurate to recognize that sometimes rainbows follow storms. Sometimes they don’t. The same storm might produce a rainbow for one, while others are still searching among the clouds, hoping for a glimpse of a vibrant blue or orange, yellow or red hue. A rainbow for some does not ensure a rainbow for others. Sometimes, the clouds linger. This is a more reasoned way of thinking about the complexity of reproduction, and specifically about pregnancy after pregnancy loss. Because, as we know, there are no guarantees. And we can’t presume to know what is in store for someone else’s reproductive future. We can barely know what will happen in our own. So it is wise to abandon notions of fairy-tale endings, since we can’t know what’s to come, and because, when you really think about it, things don’t usually work out perfectly in fairy tales either. Compassion and nonbinary language surrounding this topic should take precedent. The last thing we want to do is create a feeling of Otherness within our own community. Sometimes a rainbow follows, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a rainbow is a child, and sometimes it’s the renewal of vows, a career milestone, a new sense of self, the ability to self-love. And, sometimes, a rainbow baby is not one that is carried by the loss parent, but is brought into the fold via adoption, surrogacy, or foster care. And even if a rainbow does follow the storm, there is so much we might wrestle with throughout pregnancy and parenting after loss. So much more nuance tucked in.
I Had a Miscarriage Page 15