Category: General

2020 will always be the year of rainbows for me. Rainbows filled our windows and our hearts as it became the symbol for the NHS workers during the first national lockdown. It seemed like a good choice too. Rainbows occur when sunshine appears after rain and there was something quite beautiful and poetic about that. A reminder that the NHS staff were the ray of hope, keeping the nation going, amongst the dark storm that COVID brought.

Of course, rainbows have been used for many thousands of years as a symbol for peace and hope. The rainbow is even mentioned in the very first book of the bible: Genesis 9:16 (NIV) “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth. ”

A reminder that for those who find comfort in faith, that even though God cannot prevent the bad weather and the dark times, they believe that He is with them through it, a symbol of the connection between heaven and earth. A sign of hope.

Even though we see rainbows as arcs, scientifically they are perfect circles, but we are unable to see the bottom half. What more is there in life that we cannot see and cannot understand? Do we only see half of the rainbow in this life, awaiting the fullness of another life to come?
Rainbows have more recently been used as a symbol of the LGBTQ community and I can see why. There’s an inclusivity associated to rainbows. The whole spectrum of humanity is represented by the different colour strands. The idea that being a human is not clear cut, or to stick with the colour theme, life is not black and white, and that however you identify is okay.

As I write this, I think of the Black Lives Matter movement following the death of George Floyd this year and the importance that all people from all backgrounds learning about each other and living in harmony. There’s a beauty in the world connecting. Think, would a rainbow be as beautiful if it was one block of colour that appeared in the sky. It’s the fact that all the colours appear at once that strikes me as the most important.

So now onto a personal note. 2020 will always be the year of rainbows for us, as it is the year that we discovered we were expecting our own rainbow baby. This term has been coined for any child who is born following the loss of a previous baby, in pregnancy or infancy. As many of you know losing Ivy thrust us into the deepest despair. We’ve spoken in previous blogs about the fact that the world became a very dark place for us, full of sadness and anger and, especially for me, a real sense of losing my identity and not knowing where I belonged.

Over time and with support we have worked through those dark days, finding ways to find little pockets of light in amongst the sadness and returned to the routine of everyday life. And then we discovered we were pregnant again and we hoped and prayed as we waited for the results as to whether we would have a baby affected with SMA again. Even though the odds were in our favour, it felt like a 50:50 call. Yes or no? Rain or sun? The wait was agonising.

Amazingly, we had good results and while driving on the way to our 12-week scan, we spotted a rainbow in the sky. It really felt like a sign of hope and it gave me a sense of peace. And then at the scan we saw a very active little baby. Another example of there being more to life than we can see day to day. Here was our little ray of sunshine, our rainbow after the storm.

But it’s taking time to adjust. A bit like ditching your heavy winter coat as spring emerges. For months, pregnant women and babies felt painful to me. A reminder of what I had lost. A bit like seeing somebody’s exotic holiday photos, where they are all smiling, without a care in the world, on the same day that you’ve got splashed by a puddle walking home in the dark from a bad day at work. You feel a million miles away. And now suddenly it’s like we are on the plane travelling to our dream holiday. Where once I felt like I didn’t belong, the door has been reopened and I now feel like I can take that first step inside. I am becoming a part of a community I used to fit in with. I am learning to adjust to those triggers that for months have been causing me pain, as triggers that can now cause me hope. I hadn’t realised just how well I had built up the barriers to protect me. I had learned to switch off a part of myself to function in the everyday. But this new baby is softening me again, allowing me to feel like a Mummy and so with that comes feelings that I had previously only associated with Ivy. The want to protect, to nurture, to put their needs before my own.

And while I am very aware that having this baby isn’t a line drawn under the bad times, nor a replacement in any way for Ivy and all that she means to us, for the first time in over a year I am starting to look forward to the future. I am not naïve enough to think that now all will be well and I would hate to put that amount of pressure on this new little life to fix us. So in that sense perhaps the rainbow analogy works well again here.
If the joy of our new baby feels like a yellow and the anger that Ivy isn’t here to share in it feels like a red and the deep fear of something going wrong again feels like a deep purple and the sadness we always hold is blue but the excitement is orange and all our precious memories of Ivy are green, then yes I am experiencing those rainbow of emotions and they are all at once and they are all valid, important, connected and somehow mysteriously beautiful.

Like I said at the start 2020 will always be the year of rainbows for us. But maybe it’s the year of rainbows for all of us? Maybe each year should be a rainbow year? A reminder to unite. A reminder that every life is precious. A reminder that while we wish everyone a happy new year, that we should acknowledge that we will all experience that spectrum of emotions in the months ahead. A reminder to speak honestly and openly about how you are truly feeling. A reminder to connect to others, to listen and try to understand, to be there in rain and in sun.

We watch a show called “This Is Us” and, without giving any spoilers away, there is one quote that always sticks with me. “I think the trick is not to keep the joys and the tragedies apart. You’ve kind of got to let them cosy up to one another” That is what we tried to remind ourselves of over the festive period, where Christmas and Ivy’s birthday are so close together and the happy memories of what she brought into our lives swirl with the painful absence that she left behind. As we hoped that next Christmas, we will have a new baby to buy presents for, this compounded the wish that their big sister Ivy could be here to share in it all too. The joy and the tragedy interlinked.

So, I will be following the advice of that TV quote as Ivy’s sibling comes into our life. I know our emotions will be much like the weather, constantly changing and evolving. Perhaps we will have weeks of sunshine before a heavy downpour or rather intermittent cloud throughout the days. One thing I do know is the sunshine doesn’t deny that the rain ever fell. There will always be a special place in my heart just for Ivy but I’m making room for another special place too.

So here is to 2021 and the rainbow of possibilities ahead…