Pregnancy after loss is often very difficult and that is why it's called a "rainbow pregnancy" and the baby is called a "rainbow baby." The "rainbow" part refers to the joy a baby brings after the storm of loss and also reflects the difficult journey of a pregnancy after a loss.
My other pregnancies I had virtually no fear of loss. I knew it was
possible but it just didn't seem likely, similar to how most people view their
healthy older children dying. Of course you know that anyone can die at any
moment but the thought doesn't consume you. This pregnancy I worried a lot.
Sometimes it was obsessive. The first 2/3 of pregnancy I was consumed by anxiety
and depression at times, to the point where I had trouble sleeping and doing
everyday tasks. The anxiety was always worse at night, which is also when I had
the most cramping (I had a lot of cramping throughout pregnancy that no one could explain). Many nights Ryan and I would be watching tv and I would feel
the cramping getting more intense and I would tell him “I’m going to start
bleeding any minute!” as my anxiety ramped up into a panic attack.
I also had a lot of insomnia, nightmares, and night
waking. I tried several things: homeopathy, relaxation scripts, prayer, EMDR therapy,
and some of it took the edge off but nothing worked completely. The anxiety and sleep disturbances were directly related to the amount of cramping I was having. I would try
to alleviate the cramping with things like epsom salt baths, calcium
magnesium supplements, hydrating, resting, believeing it was possibly due to dehydration and overdoing it physically. That worked some of the time. As my pregnancy
progressed I went from worrying about a miscarriage to worrying about a
premature birth. 
One night when I was 27 weeks nothing I was doing would help
the cramping so we went to St John's L&D. They didn’t see any discernible contractions on the monitor
and did an ultrasound to measure my cervical length. The doctor, whom I had
seen previously for a consultation after my miscarriage and whom I trusted,
reassured me that since I had gone to term in my first two pregnancies, since I
wasn’t having actual contractions, and since my cervix looked great, it was very
unlikely that I would go into labor early. After that the cramping slowed down
considerably while I continued to have normal braxton hicks (which always felt
different and I knew it was common to have a lot of strong braxton hicks in a
4th pregnancy). In hindsight I think the cramping was partly caused by my mental
state.
After hitting each “milestone” in my pregnancy I would feel better: 7
weeks (my first ultrasound), 12 weeks (miscarrige rate drops considerably after
this point and we heard the heartbeat on doppler), 16 weeks (when I lost the
twins), 20 weeks (second ultrasound), 22 weeks (earliest viability), 24 weeks
(most hospitals will intervene to save a premature baby at this point), 27 weeks
(third ultrasound and hospital visit), 34 weeks (very good chance of survivability for premature
baby), and 37 weeks (safe to have a homebirth).
As I reached each milestone my fear shifted from miscarriage
to preterm birth to stillbirth. As I went into the third trimester it did help a
lot that I was able to find her heartbeat with my fetoscope and feel her moving
several times a day. Earlier than that I would spend days and even weeks coping
with anxiety and depression, wondering if my baby was still alive. The anxiety improved by reaching the milestones, reassuring prenatal appointments, and getting farther into pregnancy, but it
didn’t completely go away until after she was born. Now at 5 weeks postpartum I feel like my
regular self once again.
This past year I have been consumed by fear and by and trying everything I can to overcome that fear and to trust that God has
the best plan for me. Having covid restrictions and other disturbing things
happening politically and socially at this time contributed to my anxiety. It
has been weird that covid restrictions started right when my miscarriage
happened, lasted through my entire rainbow pregnancy, and mostly ended (for now) right
when my pregnancy ended! My anxiety and depression also started and ended around
the same times. I know the two things are separate but because of the timing
they have felt very interconnected for me.
I have also definitely felt the
contagious fear of death and that definitely contributed to my anxiety. It is interesting that before
covid, it seems like society wasn't concerned with death and now people are
obsessed with fear of the knowledge that they will one day die. Unlike a lot of
people, I don't fear death for myself. I would rather die when I'm old and not
now when I have a young family, but I do know that if it's my time, it's my
time. And when I die I will go to Heaven. What I feared during pregnancy is
having to live through the death of another child, especially because I really didn't think I could physically or mentally go through yet another pregnancy with no guarantee of a live baby. I had mourned the twins and
accepted their deaths but I didn't know how I could do it again with no hope of ever having a living baby at that point.
In early second trimester I also heard about several women I knew all having miscarriages at the same time. It really freaked me out and made me wonder if something terrible had been released into the environment (the elitists, such as Bill Gates, are all about depopulation after all!). It's interesting how when you are pregnant you are SO influenced by your environment and the people surrounding you .
Physically this
was my hardest term pregnancy by far, perhaps partly because I am now much
older. Not only with the cramping but I was also so much more tired, achy, and I
had trouble sleeping. I didn’t exercise as much as I should have and I gained a
lot more weight than I did in my first two pregnancies. I did do cranial sacral
therapy and that helped some (chiropractic has never really done much for me).
The physical and mental difficulties combined had me super convinced that this
was our last baby!
This pregnancy I also chose a lot of medical interventions
that I normally wouldn't. Some I consider to be necessary with little to no risk,
such as taking bioidentical progesterone supplements and folate instead
of folic acid. But others I have really struggled with and feel guilty about
choosing, such as multiple ultrasounds (which do have risks for the baby). At
the time I absolutely needed the ultrasounds for my mental health, as I needed
to know that my baby was alive and healthy and that my cervix was not dilating.
But that doesn't negate the harm that may have been caused to my baby. I wish I
had been able to trust God and His design for pregnancy and birth, but it was
hard when I felt like my body had already failed me once in keeping my babies
safe.
Interestingly, I had little concern about how breastfeeding would go, even
though I technically had trouble with my supply when Audrey was an older baby
(long story I wrote about in previous blogs but the abbreviated version is that
she had severe kidney reflux that we didn’t know about until she felt so sick
that she drastically reduced her intake during nursing and lost a lot of weight.
After a hospital stay and many medical interventions, including surgery, her
kidneys are working well and she has been on track for growth since about 18
months old. But she initially she declined so drastcially in such a short amount of time I do believe that she was in danger of dying if we hadn't insisted on hospitalizing her.) I believed that once my baby was here everything would be fine, including nursing and weight gain.
And
that, thankfully, has been what’s happened! I’ve had the normal ups and downs
(and going through the death of my last grandparent) but overall my postpartum
has been so wonderful and joyous! It has actually been so good that Ryan and I
both wish we could have another baby! The newborn phase has been my favorite
phase by far with each of the girls and it’s a shame it goes by so fast. I have
tried hard to savor and enjoy each moment even when I’m sleep deprived or I
can’t get Lily to settle down. I suppose that is part of our biology - we
quickly forget how hard the pregnancy and birth was so we will get pregnant with
another baby. As my friend once said, “when it’s good, it’s SO good!” I am so
grateful to finally have my baby and to have postpartum be SO good.
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