Mothering a Rainbow

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

For the most part, I believe I am mothering Elijah in much the same way as I did Isaac and Xavier as babies. But there are moments. Snatches of time where everything is different. When it becomes truly apparent I am mothering a rainbow child.

Whilst pregnant, every twinge, real or imagined, sent me to the darkest of conclusions. Every time I caught his heartbeat on the monitor, or felt him kick, my breath would catch with gratitude. I get to carry this baby. I will get to hold this baby. I will get to keep this baby. How could I fathom such a blessing?

A few days after giving birth, a cocktail of postpartum hormones running through my veins, holding him tight as a newborn baby and begging him not to die. My heart aching at what was lost and the unbearable thought of further pain. Then his little fingers curled around mine, reassuring and real. He was staying. Staying.

Looking into his new but wise eyes and asking in a whisper if he met Xavier, if he knows how he is. Searching the deep blue seriousness for a flicker of recognition. Some sign of communion. He is not his brother. Yet a reflection of his brother. His brothers’ blood running through his veins.

He is softly sleeping, shallow breaths making his chest rise and fall almost indiscernible. I watch fervently, hand on his little body, willing each little breath to come. I am the guardian of his sleep. If I leave him for a little while in the hands of rest, I feel guilty and panicked. I come back to find him safe and feel like I have cheated fate. Every morning when he wakes, I am elated and overcome with gratitude. Sleep, that silent thief, has stayed faithful and not turned on us again. I am so blessed.

Sometimes I will pause before I check on him. For if he has entered a realm I cannot, I want to hover in the innocent happiness of the moment before knowledge. Then I start and I wonder if that moment would represent the chance to save him. All this inner turmoil and when I finally check on him, he is peacefully sleeping. No care in the world. He is peace, he is calm. He is balm to my wound-up heart.

Parenting after loss is a double edged sword. On one side is the almost unbearable knowledge that your child can die. On the other a level of gratitude that reaches deep into your heart. I have known the depths, so I will appreciate the heights. We have been through the thunderstorm, we have seen the rainbow and we are flying with the sun.

21Nov2013

Making the rainbow connection

Posted in Parenting after loss by Robyna

I am not the first loss mother to be consumed and confused by the place of a rainbow baby in her family. This beautiful gift that I have paid the highest of prices for. I think the crux is the confusion is this: you learn things in grief – precious, beautiful things. We sometimes call them the gifts of grief. But every angel mother I know would gladly give each and every one of those gifts back to hold their baby again. There is nothing you can gain in loss that tips the balance in favour of saying good-bye. And then another child comes into your life. Suddenly, there is something borne of loss that is so precious that it gives you pause to reconsider.

No one is going to knock on my door and offer my Xavier back in exchange for Elijah. I am never going to have to make that choice. And yet there is still guilt surrounding the presence of Elijah at the expense of Xavier’s absence. My love for Elijah will always be tinged with a longing for Xavier. His milestones, more so than Isaac’s, paired with wondering if Xavier’s would have looked the same, been met at the same time. And as I am granted longer and longer with Elijah, my feelings for him intensify and evolve in a way that they never had time to with Xavier.

In the weeks following Elijah’s birth I would look at him and could not fathom how I survived the loss of Xavier. Each feeling was intensified in those weeks – the joy, the love, the fear and the grief. Even now, I think I could not survive if we lost Elijah. And that thought feels traitorous – could I survive the loss of one child over another? Am I, in some way, choosing one son? Loving him more?

Of course, it would be possible to fall pregnant four months after Xavier was born had he lived. Just terribly, terribly unlikely. I was breast-feeding and two children had always been our plan. Whilst now I look at photos and think of Xavier as missing, in a way that’s disingenuous – in reality it was never the way our family would look.

And yet, how often do our families end up the way we planned? Those that had sworn to no children may end up with a family of six. How many third children are born in the hopes they might be a different gender to the first two? Accidents occur frequently. Do the mothers in those families agonise over the children they had not initially planned on and wonder at their place in the family? Or do they not even pause to think it over – just accept the beautiful gifts bestowed on them and the fluid shapes of family over time?

When I think about the shape of my family – my boys – this is what I picture: Two boys, one much littler than the other, their faces turned towards the sunshine. Rays of light gently settling around them, and both of them with an understanding that this light belongs to their middle brother.

28Oct2013

Welcome to the world little rainbows

Posted in Parenting after loss, Pregnancy after loss by Robyna

All over the world, new parents are gazing with untold love, adoration and awe at their newborn children. Of these, a small percentage are filled with just a little more wonder, just a touch more disbelief, slightly more gratitude that their sweet little baby has arrived and done so safely. They are the ones who do not sleep, but watch over each breath. The ones who marvel at the sound of little cries, not quite believing they are real. The ones that have to pinch themselves that so much joy has finally come into their lives. When a midwife assures them that babies are less fragile than they look, they are the ones that regard that advice with suspicion. Experience has taught them differently.

They are not first time parents but the baby they held first was without breath. And at painful times, without recognition. Midwives, doctors and friends might refer to them as first time parents, as new mums and dads. Not necessarily because they are ignoring the baby who came before – the baby that didn’t take a breath or only snatched the smallest amount of life. But because our language has no word for a parent that loses a child, let alone to describe a parent who has lost a child and then welcomed a living baby into the world. These mothers and fathers have had to parent in the hardest of situations. They have had to find ways to love and connect with a child that they cannot see. They have had to nurse aching, empty arms. They have had to find strength they never knew possible. They have had to fight for their motherhood, for their fatherhood. They have kept memories alive. Their hearts have been broken and yet swelled to accommodate the most amazing of loves.

And now these parents face a new and alien set of challenges. How to bathe this little one. How often to feed. How to soothe cries. How to tell if he’s too hot, is she’s too cold. But there are other things they already know. That the love for your child is all consuming. That you love them a little more dearly each day. That being a mother or father is such an awesome and beautiful responsibility. They know the full precious weight of their baby. They know every breath is a treasure. And they know that this little one has a big brother or sister, looking over them. Keeping them safe. They know that their family looks a little different from others, but their first child or children will always have a place within it. They have loved and loved and loved. And now they get to love a baby that demonstrably loves them back.

With much love to all the parents who have recently welcomed rainbow* babies into their families, but particularly those who are welcoming a child after losing their first.

*A rainbow baby is the term used by the loss community to describe a child conceived after loss. It refers to the hopeful rainbow that appears after a storm. The storm does not refer to the child that did not live. But rather the very dark place that inevitably follows after loss. Nor does a rainbow signify the end of grief. A rainbow baby brings hope and light into a shattered family, whilst they still miss and grieve for the child they hold in their hearts rather than their arms.

24Aug2013

1, 2, 3 – Loving all my children

Posted in Connecting with Angel Child, Grief over child loss, Parenting after loss by Robyna

When I was pregnant with Xavier I worried that I would not be able to love him as much as I did Isaac. How could I love anyone with the same intensity as my firstborn, my little buddy, my constant companion? We had been each other’s world for so long.

What I had not been prepared for is that the all-encompassing love you feel when your first is born hits you all over again when your second enters the world. I had thought this love bomb had already been ignited when Isaac was born, but here was this intensity once again. The love you feel right to your bones and takes a hold of your soul. A thousand loves impacting you all at once. The only thing vaguely comparable is the obsessive love you feel in the first throes of a relationship when every thought is occupied by your crush. Take that feeling, deepen it and multiply it by a thousand and you still won’t come close. This is the all-consuming love that is born with your baby. Your first, your second, third, fourth – it doesn’t matter, that love remains just as powerful.

Xavier became the centre of my world, just as surely as I was his. Everyone else just orbited the peripheral edges. Including my darling Isaac. He came to see us in the hospital. His three-year old body ridiculously large. His hands and feet preposterously enormous. For a split second, as he shifted in my mind from baby to big brother, he seemed a stranger. I had not expected this. My heart expanded and swelled and there was more love for both of my boys. But my focus had shifted to the child who needed me more.

When Elijah came into our lives I was prepared and I knew that my relationship with Isaac would change again. I also knew that my relationship with Xavier would change. Early in grief I had decided not to relate to Xavier as a newborn – he had a different role in our lives. I disassociated pictures of infants from Xavier – I tried to avoid imagining what he would be doing as a baby and instead focused on the more abstract ways we experienced him. The sunshine, butterflies, nature’s beauty and the kindness of others. It was a way of protecting my heart.

But when Elijah lay on my chest for the first time it was impossible not to think of Xavier. To remember what was and what might have been. But in that moment, I didn’t feel an aching sadness, I felt gratitude for this new life and Xavier’s part in protecting his little brother. My relationship with Xavier continues to shift and grow. My need for a baby in my arms has been soothed by Elijah. This portion of my grief – the fact a newborn was ripped from my arms like the severing of a limb, has been begun to be healed by littlest boy. But my need to still love and mother my middle child has not eased. The fact I miss just him remains – that has not lessened. My relationship with Xavier has become more uniquely about who he is and what he means to me, and less about regret for what we will have never have with him. The way I mother him will change accordingly. Each of my boys with their special place in my expanded heart.

Isaac with Eljah

Isaac with Xavier

12Aug2013

Two Weeks

Posted in Uncategorized by Robyna

On the weekend Elijah turned two weeks old. For our family this was a significant milestone. It’s the age Xavier was when we said goodbye. On the eve of Elijah’s 13th day – the morning we found Xavier without breath – Elijah was held all night long. My gorgeous sister stayed with me as we watched TV and waited out the sunrise. As the clock ticked over to 5am, I held Elijah close and wept with relief.

“You’re going to stay” I whispered, elated and sleep deprived.

N had pointed out that there was minimal chance of Elijah dying by SIDS and non-existent odds of him doing so at the same age we lost Xavier. But the heart and head sometimes follow different paths. Even though it makes little logical sense, I cannot help but feel that we have dodged a bullet.

The anxiety remains, and it probably will forever, but the feeling of certainty that we will lose Elijah has lessened. I will still wake in the night and check that he is breathing, but I am less surprised now to find that he still with us. When you have experienced the worst, it can be hard to have faith in the future. But I am slowly finding that faith. I do not believe our lives will be perfect from this point onwards. I have seen too many people go through multiple losses to believe that our angel children look after us from afar and protect us from any future pain. Life doesn’t work on a series of checks and balances, nor do tragedy and deservedness have any bearing on each other. I cannot look into the future and know what it holds. But I am sure there will be both beauty and pain, laughter and tears. So I can face the future with fear or with hope and I am going to choose hope.

I wrote these affirmations to help me with my anxiety – they might help other parents too.