I remember the day I met you, my rainbow baby, like it was yesterday.
The dark.
The winter cool.
The solitude.
The way my hips swayed as hot water poured down my back.
How months of anxiety eased beneath the tension of each contraction.
And how pain made me breathe in sharp and strong at first, and then made me forget to breath when it was time for you to come.
I’ll never forget the moment they told me to push, and I couldn’t — but my body did it anyway.
And the way I felt every single thing when you emerged — breathing, alive and whole.
I had never felt such intensity in all my life.
I’ll never forget the day I met you, my rainbow baby.
You suckled right away, and I breathed in your life.
And I have been breathing your life in every moment since.
Maybe it’s because recurrent loss made me think I’d never have a breathing child in my arms again.
Two years have come and gone. In some ways, it feels like an eternity because I think you were destined to be mine.
And then in other ways, it feels as though scarcely a moment has passed.
Because even though you are almost two, I love you with the same vulnerable rawness, the same intensity, as the day our eyes met for the very first time.
And I always will.
You will go off to Kindergarten, and I will look at you and think, “There goes my baby.”
You’ll have your first sleepover, and I’ll think, “There goes my baby.”
You’ll go on your first date, and I’ll think, “There goes my baby.”
You’ll walk down the aisle, and I’ll think, “There goes my baby.”
You’ll give birth — I hope, oh how I hope — and I’ll think, “There goes my baby.”
And you’ll know just as I have known all these years of growing and changing and learning and moving.
That no matter how the years may come or go…
You will always be my baby.
Rachel Lewis is a foster, adoptive and birth mom. She lost her second baby she named Olivia to a ruptured ectopic pregnancy, and had 4 miscarriages in the following 4 years. On the journey to becoming a family, she gave birth twice (once to a rainbow), adopted a precious daughter and fostered and released a darling son after a year and a half. When she’s not chauffeuring her kids around, you can find her shopping at Trader Joe’s, drinking coffee, or writing about her journey as a mom at www.TheLewisNote.com. Follow her on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/Thelewisnote. And join her online support group for bereaved and infertile mamas at Brave Mamas, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1657136001012257/
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