We lost our daughter. We dealt with infertility for a long time. We brought her little brother home, finally. And now what? I feel like I am staggering out of the wreckage that used to be my life, dazed, blinded and shellshocked. Everything in the last years was about getting or staying pregnant, grieving, trying to heal. The friend fallout took its toll, I lost my job, there is not much left of my pre-loss life. Just a big void and this little guy in our arms, who we adore whilst missing and grieving his sister at the same time, and who we worry about more than is healthy or sane. No one gets why I am so lost. Everything worked itself out in the end, they say. Such a slap in the face. Anyone here who gets what I am trying to say?

Yes, I think I do, Cee. My daughter was stillborn in 2012. Before her death, we'd had two miscarriages and we had another one after. Her brother was born in April 2013. I was pregnant for 99 weeks before he was born and I feel like I spent a few years just thinking about getting pregnant, grieving, being pregnant and terrified. And now he's almost 1.5 years old and we have an older daughter who is nearly 6 and everyone - even those who know about our middle daughter's death - seems to assume that now we're good. I have found that even from within the loss community, though not to such a great degree - still, there is an assumption that the so-called rainbow baby (I loathe that term, personally) is the happy ending to a very sad story. But there is no ending to this story, and though our son has brought an immeasurable amount of joy into our family, his birth did not erase his sister's death and the three of us who she left behind still grieve her every single day. I feel lonely in a way I didn't before he was born. I don't quite fit in with many of my other bereaved mom friends and I don't quite fit back in to my old 'normal' friends. And I am back at work in a very demanding job and keeping house and raising my kids and generally living what looks like a very normal life but it doesn't feel normal to me. Sometime I think of those stories about men who came back from the world wars and didn't know how to function in peacetime anymore. Some of them started to miss the war, because there at least things had been real. That is how I feel sometimes. I don't want to go back to the time before my son was born because it was awful, but at least then I was allowed by the world to feel awful, too, instead of having to pretend that now he's here and my family is 'complete' and everything is just peachy-fucking-keen.

Hi Cee, I think I understand. Our daughter died at 22 weeks gestation 25 months ago and our rainbow babe is now 15 months old. It took me until he was ~8 months old to have a moment where i felt like myself again. Not exactly like before we lost our daughter, but more like me than I had felt since she died. I felt like things might actually be OK again. It was a fleeting moment, and the darkness continues to creep back in. But now there are more moments of what feels like a regular life.

A pregnancy after losing a child is so terrifying, and then having an infant is terrifying. It is all so primal. Your description of staggering out of the wreckage is apt. We are forever changed, forever marked. It is so hard to not feel like it will all come crashing down again. I wish you all the best as you navigate your new life, loving your son who is with you and the daughter who you lost. XO