We got Pregnant during a Pandemic

WE ARE HAVING A BABY! 

Rainbow baby Woelber is due December 2020. 

We got pregnant during a pandemic.. 

You’ve heard all the jokes, seen all the memes about all the babies going to be born in December. My husband and I are officially a statistic of the “Covid-19 Self Quarantine Baby Boom.” Im not sure thats its official title, but we will call it the “Covid-19 Baby Boom” for now. 

We are officially expecting our first baby earth-side and we couldn’t feel more blessed. 

But, this isn’t our first pregnancy. Our first baby is in heaven. 

In November, 2019 we found out we were expecting our first child after our first month of “trying.” Oh, we were ELATED. I kept it a secret from Keith, my husband, as I ordered the “big sister/big brother” bandanas for our dogs. Those got delayed and I couldn’t handle keeping our special secret to myself. We were headed to a friends house on a Friday evening and I suggested we have a “pre-funk” drink. I had hidden my phone to film his reaction. Keith made us our drinks, we cheers and as he took his first drink, I set mine down and pulled out the discreetly hidden pregnancy test and revealed the news. You should’ve seen his face! 

We had our first appointment at 8 weeks and everything seemed great. We told our families about our addition at Christmas time and they never saw it coming. We really had surprised everyone. We felt on top of the world! 

New Years Eve our world came crashing down. Our little babe had been in heaven for 3.5 weeks unknowingly to us (right after our first appointment :( ).  We would not be welcoming our baby into the world in July, 2020 like we hoped. It was a miserable, lonely, gut-wrenching time where every emotion seems so foreign and out of place. 

All the grief books in the world don’t help when you lose a child. Yes, they can help guide you and help process your feelings, but when you can’t even put a name to what you are feeling— its impossible. I forgot how to even communicate with people. I didn’t want to be alone, but didn’t want to be anywhere close to another human. I didn’t want to talk about it but, needed to. I didn’t want to work but, couldn’t spend my entire day cooped up. It is a never-ending spiral of emotions and you can’t tell which way is up, right or wrong. You feel completely alone and consumed with guilt. 

Thank God for Keith. 

He is the hero in our story and I’m almost certain I couldn’t have made it through without him. While processing his own grief, he took care of me and placed my needs above his own. He is the definition of selflessness and ultimately my rock and safe space.

Day by day we got more comfortable saying the words we were scared to say at the beginning: “we lost our baby.” The more we shared the more we found out just how crowded that empty space we felt we were in actually was. 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage. THATS 25%! 1/4 of all expecting parents won’t get to meet their babies. I guess we knew the possibility but never thought it would happen to us-- but, it did. We are part of that statistic. 

For weeks we loved that baby. We felt so connected, started to plan a life for them and feel so blessed that we got to love another being so deeply. We know that God and God alone has a plan for us as a couple, us as individuals, and for our children— whether they make it in our arms or not. We both find comfort in that and knowing that we have someone waiting for us in heaven when we get there. 

We believe this baby was handpicked for us by their sibling in heaven and is giving us a chance to be parents earth-side. There isn’t a day that we don’t think about our first baby and how we would be anxiously awaiting their arrival. How on Mother’s/Fathers Day we give two separate hugs: one for the baby we lost that made us a mom and a dad, and one for the baby we are currently expecting. Being a mom and a dad doesn’t require a physical baby— we’ve overcame something that I don’t wish on anyone, we lost the baby that made us parents. 

A “Rainbow Baby” is a baby born after a loss of a previous child/pregnancy. This is our rainbow baby. This rainbow baby is going to be our greatest adventure. At almost 15 weeks (as Im writing this) the anxiety of miscarriage is (almost) gone and the utter joy and excitement of bringing a baby into our world is overwhelming. Our closest friends and family have been our support system and God has been our stability. 

We are statistics. We lost a baby. We got pregnant during a worldwide pandemic and are expecting our rainbow baby in December 2020, the “COVID-19 Baby Boom.”