An Angel Baby and a Rainbow Baby

You see two pink lines, and it hasn't really hit you. You're pregnant, there is a little tiny embryo, or maybe a fetus, thriving inside of you. You look down at your unchanged abdomen, and it hasn't really hit you that you're going to be a mother. You're thrilled, overjoyed, and overwhelmed all at the same time. Weeks go by and it starts to sink in, you start glancing at baby clothes and surfing the web late at night for only the best things for your little baby.

The thought crosses your mind a few faint times that something could go wrong, but it could never happen to you. You're pregnant, and you're going to be a mommy! That's what I thought too, and then something did go wrong. At 10 weeks pregnant, I found out I was never going to meet my little baby. In fact, I was carrying a blighted ovum and there was no real baby at all.

In my mind, my world had collapsed. For 6 weeks I had been overjoyed with the idea of becoming a mother, that there was a living baby with a beating heart within me. I told everyone. I window shopped (and even bought a few things!) only to find out there would be no baby in just a few short months to wear those clothes, or to sit in that stroller. There is nothing worse than losing a child. Even if you have never held that child in your arms, you love him or her and the rush of emotions, pain and guilt, is unmatched. I knew there was nothing I had done wrong, and there was nothing anyone could have done to change things but I was devastated just the same.

A few weeks passed, and I had moved on from the emotional mess I had become and realized there was another chance. On Thanksgiving 2010, only 7 weeks after our angel baby left us, we discovered I was pregnant with our rainbow baby.

I have never been so thankful for anything in my entire life. Ayana is four months old now, and there is not a day that has passed that I have not done my best to be a great mother and provide everything she needs. Becoming a mother is the most accomplished thing I have done in the last 22 years. 

That's right, I'm 22 years old. I'm what some would consider a "young mother." Young mother? Maybe. Great mother? I would like to think so.  Age has no bearing on the greatness of a parent. I am the wife of a soldier, I have lived in 3 different states in the last three years, I have lost a baby and had a baby, and I have lived and learned through it all and there is no reason I am less qualified to be an outstanding mother based on how old I am.

 I love and appreciate my daughter, and there is nothing in this world I would not do to give her everything she needs to thrive. If there is any doubt in anyone's mind that I am not cut out for this because I am "only" 22, then you have failed to become an adult yourself and look past the meaning of a number and to the fact that I am not a drug addict or homeless, neglectful or hurtful, uneducated or ignorant. I am an adult, a wife, and a mother, and there is nothing in this world I believe I am more fit to be.

Losing our first pregnancy has taught me to appreciate what I have. There are no guarantees. It taught me love, for without the love I had for that tiny being and the love I felt from Tyler and the friends and family that supported me I would never have grown from the loss. I have an angel baby, and I have a rainbow baby, and I am a great mother because of them both.