Honoring All of our Rainbows

My complex thoughts on "Rainbow Babies"

Two days after my second pregnancy loss was completed, my doctor said, “this will be a blip on the radar. You’ll be holding your new baby in no time.”

Spoiler alert: I never held my “new baby.” I’ve never had my rainbow baby.

Statistically, many of us will go on to hold our rainbow baby. Only 1-2% of individuals experience recurrent pregnancy loss. Despite this, I still have complex thoughts about the term, and not simply because I don’t have a rainbow baby.

My thoughts include:

1. Your rainbow baby did not make your loss baby a storm. At times, it may have felt like a storm, but I never want to invalidate the experience of loss I had.

2. A rainbow baby is not a promise or a guarantee.

3. I am not a failure if I can’t have a rainbow baby. And, I’m not a failure if I chose not to have a rainbow baby.

4. The term “rainbow baby” invalidates all of the other things in my life that are rainbows. We spend so much energy on getting our rainbow baby, that we can lose sight of everything else that we are.