Darrell & Sharyn

“Symbol”

Many Baby Loss Mom’s refer to their pregnancy after a loss as their “Rainbow pregnancy.” The reason for this is — “Rainbow Babies” is the understanding that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm. When a rainbow appears, it doesn’t mean the storm never happened or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath. What it means is that something beautiful and full of light has appeared in the midst of the darkness and clouds. Storm clouds may still hover but the rainbow provides a counterbalance of color, energy and hope.

I do refer to our new little sprout as our rainbow pregnancy on occasion. It is the light that has occurred after our storm.

“Why are you telling us all this and how does it apply to today’s prompt?”

Well.. As much as I believe that this is our rainbow baby, I actually associate rainbow’s with Pixel and Bit.

You see – We did lose Bit early on in the pregnancy, but I feel as though he/she was with Pixel the whole time. I associate Rainbow’s with the two of them because on the day that we believe that Pixel died, there was a huge storm at our place. It only lasted for about 30 minutes, but everything got dark, the wind was blowing trash cans down the street. Lightening was striking everywhere. The rain was coming down in sheets every which way. It was a nasty little storm that just popped up with little warning. After the storm, we went outside to see how things had fared. In the sky, there was a double rainbow. I have seen a couple double rainbows in my life, but none this bright. You could practically see the whole rainbow for both of them.

I associate this as Pixel and Bit playing in Nature. I didn’t know at the time that Pixel had died, but it has meaning to me now. So whenever I see double rainbows, I think of my twins.

“Special Place” – Place you visit that brings you peace.

Our special place right now is the nursery. We have changed it into a guest bedroom, and when we have company over, it is a child-proof room for the kids to play in.

When we get lonely and sad, we go into the room and just lay down on the bed and dream. Sometimes, we just sleep in there at night. There is a computer set up, so we usually put on a kids movie and fall asleep in there thinking of Pixel.

Darrell uses the room to practice his bagpipes. When we first lost Pixel, he use to just go in there to play “Amazing Grace” to Pixel. He told me once that he loved playing for Pixel.

So our nursery/guest bedroom is a special place to us. I think it will be hard on us when we finally move.

“Jewelry”

I don’t have any jewelry to remind me of Pixel. I am horrible at wearing jewelry. I only wear my wedding rings unless we are dressing up to go somewhere nice. Then I might add a necklace and some earrings.

I have a lot of pieces that are memories within themselves, but nothing specific for Pixel. This might change at some point, but it isn’t a priority right now.

“What to Say”

In times of grief, everyone grieves a little differently. In the grief over the loss of a child in-utero, some people don’t know what to say. Sometimes, there are no right words to say. Just saying that you are there for us and that you care is all you really need to say. Just remembering that our child existed no matter how long is a treasure to me. It is hard because no one got to meet him, or feel him move except for me, so it is understandable to not have the same connection. But he did exist and he was loved.

Just be there. That is all you can do when someone is grieving. Be there when they need to talk. Be there when they just need to cry. Even if you are thousands of miles away, just calling and seeing how we are doing occasionally is being there for us.

Today’s prompt is “What Not to Say.” Basically it is asking us if we have had anything terrible said to us after our loss.

I honestly don’t feel that we have had anything terrible said to us. Somethings were said with love from someone, but at the moment they said it, it came across as hurtful. We have learned that we need to see the reasoning behind what was said, not always the words themselves. This wasn’t something we learned just after the loss of Pixel though. It was something that we learned as we were grieving the loss of a biological child after our infertility diagnosis. It is a long learning process with many twists and turns.

The only thing that was the hardest for me was when people would tell me “I could never be as strong as you.” I wrote about my feelings on that here.

I know we aren’t suppose to just copy and paste items from the internet, but these quotes are something I feel sums up today’s prompt.