Rainbow baby

I visited my parents home for the first time in over a year a few weeks ago. Our relationship has been very strained for about 3 years, but has been healing.

It took me almost a year into our struggle with infertility to tell my parents we were struggling. The rift had been caused due to who I chose to marry, and I figured that the response would be negative regarding having children. So one day, I put on my brave panties and sent a text message.

Facts. This is the deal. I'm going to the doctor soon to see what's up. I'm not ready to talk about it.

"I will pray that God gives you the desires of your heart."

A few weeks later while on my "trying to fix this relationship, but not trying" phone call, my mom began to talk to me about a painful time in her life. She had married my dad at 17, and way too soon had become pregnant with my older brother and gave birth to him at 19. She had taken birth control afterwards, which was a brand new thing in the 70s. And when they decided they were ready for another child, she came off birth control. And nothing happened. She was prescribed clomid, and became pregnant. Then she miscarried. Then she got pregnant with me. There were 4 years and some months between my brother and I.

A few weeks ago, when I was there visiting, my mom took me to the room that she goes every morning to drink her coffee and read her Bible and pray. She showed me 2 little outfits hanging by her chair, one for a boy and one for a girl. She said she didn't know if I was going to have a boy or a girl, so she got one of each. She said she touches them when she prays for me. Then, she handed me a gift bag that had a soft blanket in it, and told me her prayer group at church had prayed over that blanket for us.

This journey takes an awful lot away, but I feel like God is using it to restore my relationship with my mom. I hope to see lots of "fruit" from this time in my life. I hope it makes me a better, deeper person, gives me life long friendships, that I'm able to touch the lives of others who are walking through this someday.

Although I haven't been pregnant in this journey, my mom and I share a very special broken spot, and she understands my longing in a way that many others don't. She could have never known 40 years ago what her battle would mean to me, her rainbow baby.