Emily BG's Story

The first few weeks after finding out I was pregnant were filled with naïve bliss as we dreamed about a future with our little one. However things started to change after a work trip ended in me coming down with a stomach virus that caused me to not be able to keep fluids down. This made me decide to go to the ER to ensure my baby was safe. A few hours into the ER visit I had my first ultrasound, and my whole world changed again when there was not one, but two tiny little heartbeats. I immediately texted my husband that there were two, that our one baby was actually identical twins. We spent the next few days in even more bliss as those dreams about the future turned into even bigger dreams about two sweet babies.

Just four days after hearing those sweet heartbeats, I started spotting at work. By the time I got home from work, the spotting had turned to bleeding and I told my husband I thought we should go back to the ER. As we checked into the ER, I just knew in my heart that my babies weren’t okay. Hours later, after another ultrasound and tests, the most unfeeling resident I could have ever imagined told us that our babies were gone.

I didn’t know grief like this grief was possible. I didn’t know how to be okay without my babies. I didn’t know how to deal with feeling like it was my fault that they were gone. I knew in my mind that it wasn’t my fault, and I had reassurance from my doctors that it was nothing I did nor the stomach virus, but there was no telling my heart that.

My husband and I spent the next few months dealing with grief in our own ways while trying to still support one another as best we could. He needed to know that we were still okay, he needed quiet space to think about the twins. I needed people to acknowledge my babies, I needed to know that their lives mattered. But what we experienced was none of those things. We learned like so many in the loss community do, that others don’t know how to react to the loss of a pregnancy. The comments about “you can try again”, “well at least it was early”, “you’re young, it will be okay”. When all we really wanted to hear was “this sucks, I’m so sorry.”

We continued to trudge our way along the journey of grief and life after losing our babies when four months later we found out we were pregnant again. We weren’t necessarily trying as we weren’t sure if we were ready to go through this again, but we also weren’t against future children.

For me, pregnancy with a rainbow baby has been anything but perfect. There is never a day that I don’t think about our twins or about the fear of losing this little one. That’s not to say that there is no joy or excitement. I love this little boy more than anything else in this world, but I am also acutely aware that to have a rainbow means I went through a storm.

I know that my real rainbow is finding strength in myself to move through grief, to be courageous in this new pregnancy and to be the best mom I can be to all three of my children.