I am a rainbow baby and I really dislike that term.

[GapMindTheGap]

I expect I may get slated for this post but if it resonates with one person then it is worth the post.

I am a ‘rainbow’ baby, although thankfully old enough that the term was not in existence then.

It’s not a cutesy term. It’s a term that defines a child as being the one who came after a bereavement, the next child, the ‘replacement’ child (I fully well KNOW that there is no such thing as a replacement child but if by the very name you give them, you are putting their life into relation to a child lost before them, it’s telling and it may well weigh on that child who will be too immature to understand that there can never be a replacement child).

My mum was mired in grief when she had me, something which has had a long term impact on me, thank heavens I wasn’t also stuck with that awful label of being a ‘rainbow baby’.

Child bereavement is such a devastating, emotive topic that I know as someone who has not suffered it, I am ill-equipped to even touch on it but I am a ‘rainbow’ baby and I ask please, on behalf of us rainbow babies, don’t start your child’s life by giving them that grief engulfed title.

It sounds like the crux of thus might be how your parents felt and behaved towards you, OP.

In fact I'll go a step further, all this talk of 'living in the shadow' of dead siblings is bullshit. My dead child didn't exist only to haunt the lives of my living children and cast a shadow over their lives.

OP is entitled to her feelings about her experiences, sagrada.

I feel the same as the OP. If people find comfort in a Rainbow baby thats lovely. Personally I know my own dd would be terribly upset if she knew.

I'm not a rainbow baby but my mum had a child before my brother and I that she gave up for adoption. Throughout my childhood she drank excessively, especially at christmas. My dad told me when I was a teenager that she had a dark secret and that's why she drank but not what it was. She told me when I was 21. I can't help but resent her for that now. I hated her drinking and I hated Christmas with her. That choice must have been hugely difficult for her but I resent the fact she couldn't manage a day being happy for the children she had. Never told her that but it bubbles away under the surface.

I agree, Loopy, she had a very negative experience. I wasn't addressing the OP (I've done that further back in the thread).

This thread really does show an unpleasant side of human nature.

I walked past a little independent baby shop the other day and noticed lots of baby grows and t shirts with "rainbow baby" embroidered across them.

I'm currently sat here with a hot water bottle miscarrying my 3rd pregnancy (no children yet) at 11 weeks, and people keep telling me i'll get my 'rainbow baby' soon. I roll my eyes at them - I hate that term. It also feels a little patronising to say it to people who have just suffered a loss. There is a very real chance that I will never have children.

Noted. My DS is a rainbow baby. I did mention once a couple of years ago to my DC that he was and why. I haven't since and now I doubt I will again.

@bee222 sorry you're going through this. I have been where you are and just wanted to say it truly truly sucks. I too hated people saying how 'next time might be the one' etc, I think they just don't know what to say, even though it used to make me want to scream.

I hope you have lots of RL support xxxx

bee222 I’m really really sorry and I hope someone is there to support you. I remember feeling infuriated when people made comments like that to me so can completely empathise.

So sorry to read that, bee - I do think people really just don't know what to say a lot of the time, but they'd be better off just being sympathetic and not trying to be "positive", or "bracing" as it's just not appropriate.
for you

Fair enough for raising it, OP.

My mum had 7.5 miscarriages (my brother was supposed to be a twin). I think all of my siblings would be rainbow babies, though I don't know the details of timings. But then I'd never had been born if the last before me had survived - she'd have been born when my mum just got pregnant with me.

My mum is very much inured to pregnancy loss and treats it all matter of factly.

thecats I understand you are describing your mum’s approach and of course it’s her right to feel like that and people are all different

But I have to say that I don’t think we should be putting any pressure on women to just accept pregnancy loss. And I think for many women the idea that it would be something they could just manage without grief in a ‘matter of fact’ way would be enormously hurtful

I realised my own misunderstanding about the potential impact of pg loss as soon as I experienced it for myself

I don't think I did put pressure on anyone to accept pregnancy loss? I wouldn't want to anyway, because I've personally only ever known that my mum would be entirely the wrong person to talk to if I ever did have a loss, because of her approach to it (my dad might have an entirely different perspective - I've never spoken to him about it).

But you can't acknowledge that she has the right to feel and relate her experiences on the one hand and say that her perspective isn't permitted to be shared (and the word inured is my choice - implying being accustomed to unpleasantness) on the other. The two perspectives are incompatible.

It's your right to feel that women who have have her experience don't get to speak about pregnancy loss, of course. I personally think it's important that we understand the differences in experience and respect them, rather than play top trumps.

I had hoped I was clearer. I know women who see their mc as something minor in their life. I also know women for whom it has been an immensely difficult experience.
I probably fall somewhere in the middle but found it very hard.

No top trumps here - not really an expression I’ve had said to me before about my pg loss but I guess there’s a first time for everything,

All ways of dealing with loss are valid.

My point was that by saying rainbow babies is a term that shouldn’t be used we would be being negative about a useful language to those who choose that way of dealing with their loss.

As a mum of a rainbow, my ds1 died shortly after he was born
I have. no problem with the term, in fact it a useful way of explaining a situation without getting into everything
Thing is everyone deals with things differently
There is no right or wrong in this subject

Unfortunately if your the child of parents that have lost a child
It’s proably going to have a pretty big impact on your life
Anything that effects the parents to that extent will do

I’m sorry for the fact that you were born after a loss but it sounds like the problem was more the way it was dealt with

So try not to waste energy about a term that wasn’t actually even applied to you

It’s not for me to decide how other people grieve but I do take offence at the comments about “the storm has passed”. No, for many, it absolutely has not. The new child is a new human, the storm remains as the lost child is still gone.

@lovemenorca - obviously I am coloured by my own experience, as is every person on this thread but I still dislike the term. Partly it is too broad a term to encompass the loss of a child compared to the loss of an early pregnancy (to go to both ends of the experience) but the impact cannot be compared. Simply put, to lose an early pregnancy can be devastating to some, it not so much to others. For ANYONE to lose a child is devastating. There is no competition in grief but anyone who disagrees with my previous two sentences must be empathetically bereft.

But more than any of the above, my ultimate loathing of it is that any child who is labelled by something that came before them, to make their life’s label to be a loss suffered by their parents before they even existed seems very strange. If you were to start calling every ‘rainbow baby’ instead ‘baby born to parents who have previously suffered a bereavement ranging from early miscarriage to loss of a child’ it would seem a little less appealing a label. THAT’s my issue.

But it is a term correlated to pregnancy loss.
And it's not supposed to symbolise something distasteful or unappealing. Parents who have suffered loss seem to be almost tainted by 'doom and gloom'. No one wants to hear about loss as it makes other them awkward and bereaved parents are avoided. Speaking about a rainbow baby can be a kind of gateway to conversation about loss but without being too 'jarring' and also shows the hope and joy of the parents to be, and why not.
I never used the term myself but I can't understand why it's so difficult to grasp that others find it helpful and that it suits their personal feelings.

Also I think parents like myself swing towards rainbow blankets etc as they want colour they want things that look bright and cheery
When ds2 was born, no way could I have had a baby blue blanket for him in his pram etc as every time I saw baby blue baby blankets had such a strong association with ds1
So ds2 had a bright rainbow blanket from mamas and papas
Every time I saw that blanket it made me smile

A HUGE RANT JESUS I'M SORRY
This is SO relatable.
I wasn't aware I'm what they call a "rainbow child", as it's not even a term in my language I think. Either way, I've only been informed about this max a year ago and I'm, not sure how to feel about it?
I can't bring myself to feel any positive emotions about this, I somehow mourn the loss of the other kid, what could've been my older sibling (we don't talk abt my half brother he's like 30 so we're not close and he's honestly not great but this isn't abt that), but then again if my parents had said child they wouldn't have me, in a way I feel like a replacement and nothing else but that just feels selfish.
I have mental issues, one of them being suicidal tendencies, I've never felt any guilt for leaving my friends or family, the mindset some might call selfish (while it's really just the exhaustion from everything) "not like I'll be here to see their grieving, if there's any". But something about being a "rainbow baby" and knowing I'm my parents last child, as they can't biologically have another because of some clash between their blood types, the pregnancy before me wasn't a good one, and I was a hard and risky one apparently. Knowing my parents can't have another child if I do succeed, and my dad and I are the last ones in our family with our surname, just, a part of me needs to carry it on. A part of me feels like being a rainbow baby is such an exhausting duty, while the other feels like it's a duty that pushes me forward in a way.

LORD THIS IS SO LONG I'M SO SORRY.

Fayylol I hope you are ok and are being supported.💕