A rainbow baby is one that is born after the mother has suffered a loss, such as an abortion, the baby is born lifeless, or has died shortly after birth. Mothers who have gone through this sad experience receive with great joy, and also some fear, the news of a new pregnancy .
Some of them decide to celebrate it by doing something special, such as a pregnancy photoshoot, in which they thank for the new baby that is on the way and at the same time honor those who did not survive.
We have regularly seen these sessions in which only the pregnant mother appears, but one family decided that everyone would participate in the beautiful photo session of the expectation of their rainbow baby .
Heather Branham is the mother of two daughters and in March of last year she was expecting her third baby. However, at some point in the first weeks of pregnancy they were told that their baby stopped growing, but they decided to wait a bit in the hope that everything would improve.
In the end, things didn’t turn out well and they lost their baby , but not having any of the symptoms of miscarriage and being the parents of two daughters made it very difficult for Heather and her husband to accept what had happened to them. .
In the months after this, Heather looked for stories similar to hers, which helped her a lot to know that she was not alone and also, to realize that there were many women who shared stories of hope , because after her loss they had welcomed their rainbow babies.
With that in mind, he decided that they would try again and if everything went well, they would have a rainbow baby: “I had heard that term many times, but I never expected that he would use it for me, ” says Heather in an interview for CafeMom.
She shares that she lived the first twelve weeks of pregnancy with great fear, but as the weeks and months continued to pass, both she and her husband began to feel calmer and allowed themselves to begin to feel happy about the next arrival of their baby .
When Heather reached the third trimester, she decided to take some special photos to celebrate her rainbow baby, but unlike most, she chose to have both her daughters and her husband participate in it as well.
To do this, she contacted Lauren Mann, the owner of Sixteen Roses Photography, after seeing a birthday photoshoot she had done for one of her friends. Even though Lauren had never done a rainbow baby photoshoot, she loved the ideas Heather had and got to work on it.
As we mentioned, Heather’s husband and her two daughters also participated in the session: Hailey, eight, and Kiley, five. Heather explains that this decision was part of helping explain the entire process to them , and that despite the loss they had experienced, they could celebrate the arrival of their new baby sister:
” Seeing their little faces light up during the photo shoot and putting their little hands on my belly, while feeling their little sister move, was very rewarding, and it’s a moment I’ll never forget, ” says Heather.
With these images, Heather hopes that knowing her story will make other women feel less alone in experiencing the loss of a baby, and that it will serve as a reminder to keep their hope alive .
Photos | Sixteen Roses Photography (reproduced with permission)
Via | CafeMom
In Babies and more | The photo of the baby “double rainbow” that symbolizes the struggle they went through to conceive it
