After every storm comes a rainbow...

I've been trying to figure out when and if I would write a blog post about this and decided since I like to make yearly booklets out of my blog I would like to document it for myself. As most everyone knows last August we experienced the worst possible thing that could happen to a parent. We lost our unborn daughter, Madeline, one week after my due date. I feared we would never get over the pain and grief that came with such a tremendous loss, but with each passing day the pain and grief did lessen. And even though I will always long to hold her and hear her laughter, I know she is in a better place. A place where no harm can come to her...she'll never know what fear, pain or sorrow are and for that I am thankful.

This past January we received some of the most wonderful news...I am expecting another child! We knew after we lost Maddie that we would want to try and have another baby as soon as possible. I could never replace her, but I knew that having another baby would make the terrible loss more palatable. We are extremely excited to announce that we are expecting another little boy in September 2013. Jackson Mitchell will be our Rainbow baby.

Baby-loss mothers have adopted this phrase to describe a baby that is born following the loss of a child through a miscarriage or still birth. In the real world, a beautiful and bright rainbow follows a storm and gives hope of things getting better. The rainbow is more appreciated having just experienced the storm in comparison. The storm (pregnancy loss) has already happened and nothing can change that experience. Storm-clouds might still be overhead as we continue to cope with the loss, but something colorful and bright has emerged from the darkness and misery...a rainbow.

So without further ado, here are the first pictures of our little boy, Jackson:

his sonogram picture and James' are almost identical (hopefully their personalities won't be the same...I don't think I could handle 2 James' ;-))

Houston, we have a boy!