My husband and I got married in October 2016. The day we got engaged it started raining right after he put the ring on my finger, then the day of our wedding was in the middle of a hurricane. They say a lot of things about rain on a wedding day, but it has seemed to follow us on all significant events, but we have learned to be thankful for it because we always see the rainbow at the end.
Like most couples, we wanted to start a family relatively soon and had no idea what that would entail. We had our first miscarriage in March of 2017 and then another in July 2017. I had a D & C to fully heal from that miscarriage and from there we said we needed a break, my body needed time and we needed to figure out what was next.
January 2018 I had an appointment with a new OB who said if I wasn’t pregnant in the next 6 months we would start looking into some other options and causes for recurrent loss, but by February I was in for my first ultrasound of our sweet double rainbow, Jaxon. His labor/delivery was full of painful complications, but he was perfect and healthy and we were so thankful.
We had another miscarriage in October 2019 and decided if Jaxon was our only baby on this side of heaven that was perfectly fine, but in September 2020 we welcomed our next rainbow baby, Nathan Judah.
We decided we would wait for a bit, being in the middle of a pandemic and all of the uncertainty, before we would try to grow the family, but to our surprise in July 2021, when Judah was just 10 months old, we found out we were pregnant with our precious Addi.
Her pregnancy was a challenge from the start, I started bleeding heavily 3 days after we found out we were pregnant, but that would become the normal for the next 20 weeks. I had a very large subchorionic hematoma and we had a scare every week due to all that comes with it, thinking we lost her. At 19 weeks I was cleared from MFM (Maternal Fetal Medicine) and then I made it to 20 weeks so for the first time I felt like I could breathe. But on November 5 around 6:30 in the morning my water broke and our world was rocked forever. We went to the hospital and got confirmation that our worst fear was happening, we would be delivering our baby girl and she was not going to survive delivery.
Our beautiful Addi Brooke was delivered at 5:27 pm on November 5, sleeping at 20 weeks and 3 days. It was a heartache and pain I still can’t put into words. There’s something so wrong about holding your lifeless baby, making arrangements with a funeral home and walking out empty handed, it’s not supposed to be like this.
But we leaned on our family and friends, held tight to the babies in our arms and more than anything depended on the hope of Jesus to carry us through. Some days, a lot of days, we were just going through the motions in the midst of unbearable grief, but we knew that it’s not over until it’s good and one day we will be with all of our babies again.
After Addi, a phrase we use often now, we decided we were done trying to grow the family. If it happened it was in God’s plan, but I couldn’t grasp the idea of another baby yet. But sure enough, a year and two weeks after we found out we were pregnant with our Addi, July 2022 we would find out we were pregnant with our next rainbow, Alexa “Lexi” Faith.
Her pregnancy was a constant battle to silence the fears and anxieties that were all too real. Her significant dates fell within two weeks of Addi’s the whole time – gender appointments, milestone dates, even their due dates were only two weeks apart. If Addi would have made it full term, they would have been born a year and 5 days apart. But through the whole pregnancy, we kept saying God was redeeming everything. Every time I would have a specific memory and fear related to it, word for word it would be silenced by the doctor at my next appointment.
Our final rainbow entered our world on March 27, 2 days after I took these pictures, and we are incredibly thankful. We know that not every story ends with a living baby. We recognize how painful it can be to live in the unknown and uncertainty, the realization that your plans and dreams look so very different than how you imagined. But we have also learned to wholly lean on Jesus, that is the only way to carry ourselves through the hard days and the only reason we can have hope that there is something even better ahead.
Rain and rainbows are always going to be a huge part of our story. We will always miss the babies we lost, we will hold tight to the ones we get to have in our arms and we will eagerly await when all is made right. Know that you’re not alone on this painful road and I’m thankful for this community that supports and encourages other families in their journeys of loss and grief. You’re never walking the road alone.
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