Alone

I'm pretty active within the loss community. Before being visibly pregnant with this pregnancy, I would attend the monthly peer support meetings, we hold fundraisers, I'm active on online grief support message boards. I have made many dear friends who understand the pain of losing a child.
These women are amazing people, who are supportive and kind and will always be there for me, no matter what. Many of these women have gone on a similar journey to me, losing a child and trying to conceive another one. Some have even had more than one loss, just like me.
It's like walking down a path with a dear friend and tripping in the same spots, even falling and helping each other up in similar spots. But sometimes, one of those friends ends up taking a different road at some spot on your path. In this case, that person was me.
When I was trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, it would sting when people around me would announce pregnancies. It would sting when I would see those around me having babies. I was jealous and I was hurting. I am not a mean person, I didn't wish anything bad on those people, and I was always supportive and happy for everyone around me that was getting everything they wanted...everything I wanted...but it was like a tiny little knife in my heart.
When I finally started announcing my pregnancy to everyone, I felt the burden of someone who has been on the other side of these announcements. I felt guilty. Everyone found out eventually, but the guilty still weighed heavily on me. When I was experiencing anxiety about my pregnancy, I felt like I couldn't go to my friends and family who hadn't experienced a loss because they wouldn't truly understand the complexity of my feelings and the extent of my anxiety. And guilt prevented me from talking to anyone who had experienced a loss because I felt like piling my feelings about pregnancy on someone who only wishes to be pregnant seemed extremely selfish.
I would become angry with myself a lot, why could I not just be grateful and happy? And while I was grateful, I felt that I must not be grateful enough, if I was, I would be happy and excited, not scared and anxiety ridden.
I was alone and lacking the support I needed because I was afraid or didn't think that anyone would understand how I was feeling. I kept hoping that my feelings would subside, that my anxiety would taper down as my pregnancy progressed. I kept hoping that it would really sink in every time the doctor told me that it was virtually impossible for me to lose another child the way we had lost Alexandra. None of that happened though. The anxiety persisted, the feelings stayed strong, and the words of the doctors didn't resonate at all.
Even in the deepest, darkest moments of my loss, I had never felt so alone.

Limbo

When you have experienced the loss of a child in utero, everything changes. It's like everything has a small cloud over it.
After we lost Alexandra, I experienced a subsequent loss. It was very early, an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in the loss of that tube. It was devastating to go through that after getting excited that I may be having another living child. I was leery at first, and had just come around, literally the same day that I began to bleed with that pregnancy. I talked to Steve about possible baby names less than an hour before I discovered that I was bleeding and everything started to fall apart. It was like a slap in the face, and, to me, a warning...do not get excited, do not get attached, this could all end at any moment.
You're stuck in a place where you want to feel all those exciting feelings, but you are terrified to.
When I got the positive pregnancy test after both my losses, I told myself that once we determined it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy, I would be able to get excited. We learned that the pregnancy was not ectopic, but the excitement didn't come. Instead I felt that, once we had the 12 week screening done, I would be ok and able to get over the intense fear and anxiety I was having. That didn't happen. I told myself, once I hear the baby's heart beat, that's when it will all click for me and I will be happy. When that didn't work, it was once I could feel the baby move, but still the fear and anxiety held on. I felt like there was nothing that I could do, but work on getting through the pregnancy mentally and emotionally intact, and hopefully with a living baby.
I felt like I was stuck in limbo, unable to move forward and unwilling to go back. I remember being at a meeting for people that had suffered a loss, the topic was pregnancy after a loss. I didn't tell anyone I was pregnant during the meeting, it didn't fee right to me, to be surrounded by these women who had just lost a baby, talking about being pregnant. I listened to the people who had had children after their loss. One woman spoke about how she embraced every bit of pregnancy, if it was going to end badly, she wanted to enjoy the time she had with that baby. I wished I could be like that, I tried with everything in me to see things with that outlook, but I couldn't. I was too afraid. If this pregnancy didn't go well, and I had allowed myself to get attached, I would be shattered...again...how could I live through it all again? How could I tell Dayne that his sibling wasn't coming home, again? How could I look Steve in the face knowing that my body had failed us for a third time?
No. I couldn't let myself fall in love, I couldn't get excited about all those little things that normal moms were excited about in pregnancy. I couldn't worry about the little things or plan for the future until I knew what the future would bring.
When I was pregnant with Alexandra, I would sit in her room and go through her clothes, I would look at them and imagine how fun it would be to dress her up. I would sit in her room and plan her future, think about how I was going to do things and imagine how she would be, what she would look like, what kinds of things she would like.
When I was pregnant with my next pregnancy, the ectopic pregnancy, I planned for my health. I told Steve I would still walk Dayne to school every day, I would stay active, I would eat healthy foods and I would stay fit. I thought that was the best idea, keep my body healthy and I'll keep my baby healthy.
This pregnancy wouldn't be like that, I stayed active and ate healthy foods, but I didn't talk about it, I didn't mention to anyone that it was a "plan" I lived my life exactly as I had before I was pregnant, working, taking care of Dayne, walking the dog, living my life, but not admitting to myself, or anyone, that I was planning for a baby. I didn't go into the baby's room until well after I had with Alexandra, and when I did, I got everything done that needed to be done and then I left and didn't go back in. There was no sitting and dreaming, I didn't dare imagine how the future would be or imagine what my baby would be like. I didn't dare jinx myself like that.
It's funny how you can be in such deep denial, but still form such a close bond to a baby that you are desperate to meet...

The Psychic

For as long as I can remember, I have had a serious interest in everything paranormal. I love the things that we can't prove but still huge amounts of people experience them everyday. I love the idea that our loved ones can come back for a visit. That belief alone held me together on a lot of dark days after we lost Alexandra. I saw her in everything, I felt that she was near me, comforting me. My son would even comment that his sister was with him. It made me feel a little bit better, thinking that she could be there, that she could know how much I missed her what we were doing to remember her. I still believe that she's with me, watching over, and I work hard to make her proud of her mama. I imagine she's somewhere with all the other children that were taken too soon, pointing at me, "That's my mommy" with a big huge smile. I hope that I'm right.
My need to know that Alexandra was close caused me to do a lot of things. I researched what different religions believed happened when you die, I attempted to contact different psychics, I read everything I could read about death, dying, and where we go. One of my favorite websites is a local paranormal research teams site. I visit it fairly regularly, I even participate on their forum. That is where I met a wonderful woman named Jane. She identified herself as a psychic, but most of our conversations weren't about anything to do with her gift. In April 2011, as we were busy planning a fundraiser to celebrate Alexandra's birthday, Jane commented that she would be at the Mind, Soul, and Spirit Expo in my city, inviting everyone to come and visit her. I took her up on it, I wanted to go and hoped that I could get a reading from someone. I hoped that, for once, someone could tell me that my daughter was safe, happy, and with me.
I sat down with Jane that day and opened myself up for whatever would come. Jane did talk to me about my daughter, she did tell me a lot of stuff that I needed to hear, but it didn't bring me the closure about Alexandra that I thought it would. I needed to find that within myself...but I wouldn't learn that for some time.
Jane did tell me something that really stuck with me, something that floated around the back of my mind until that warm day when we saw 2 lines on that pregnancy test and then it was shoved to the front. She told me that I would have another living child. I asked, of course, but her answer was odd, she said that I would have another living child, but not until my son was 7. Dayne (my son), was 5 at the time. I wondered how I could wait that long.
From the moment I saw that positive pregnancy test, until the day I delivered my living baby, I remembered her words...another LIVING child, when my son was 7...he turned 7 when I was pregnant. It brought me many moments of comfort throughout my pregnancy...another living child...so much of what Jane told me was true, this could be true too...right?

Positive

I can't remember which day it was...it was warm out and as we drove home from dropping our son off at school I said to Steve, "I'm probably wrong, but I want to stop at the store and pick up a pregnancy test." He agreed. He always agreed, almost every month for a year, I was always wrong.
On this day, I got home and got back in bed. I laid there watching TV until I had to use the washroom. As I waited for the test to change I thought to myself that it would be negative and I needed to be prepared. Slowly the control line changed, and then there was a second, faint line. I walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom where I said "I don't know...I think there might be a line...I think I might be pregnant..." I was in shock. Steve got up and walked into the bathroom and we both stood there, staring at the test, there was no question, it was positive. I had a rush of excitement as Steve hugged me. I wanted to believe this was the one that would stick, this was the baby I would get to take home, but deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I was terrified.
A new journey began for me that day, one filled with anxiety and fear, and more importantly, hope. This one would have a happy ending, I told myself every day...

One Step At A Time

"One step at a time there's no need to rush 
It's like learning to fly or falling in love 
It's gonna happen and it's supposed to happen  
That we find the reasons why, one step at a time"

They refer to the baby born after a loss as a "rainbow baby." The beautiful thing that happens after a storm. I chased after my rainbow for a long time...or at least I consider it a long time...

We lost Alexandra on April 29th, 2010. Born "sleeping" due to a cord accident, our lives took the most drastic turn. Alexandra is our amazing little angel, an amazing gift taken far too soon. Her loss took away all of my strength and left me broken and hollow. But as I grieved and learned to bring my little girl's memory into my life in a happy way, she gave me a new strength, the kind that you can only get from surviving something tragic.

It wasn't really enough though, I felt like something was missing. I had my beautiful son, fiance, and dog. I actively support my local pregnancy and infant loss support program. We fund raise. I had a job that I enjoyed, and I should have been happy, but something was missing. I needed my rainbow.

It's not that we hadn't tried. We had. The Christmas after we lost Alexandra we decided to try again. I even got pregnant, but that pregnancy ended in another loss...that loss of baby, the loss of my fallopian tube, the loss of another dream. Once we were given the go ahead, we kept trying, but month after month I was disappointed.  I finally gave up. I was all done trying, it was too hard and too painful.

And that's when it happened...I was pregnant. And I was thrust onto a new path, with only hope to hold onto.

This is my rainbow story, for whatever it's worth, to whomever it may help.