Irish Examiner editor Tom Fitzpatrick: Our 'rainbow baby' is cherished on Father's Day
Picture: iStock
My youngest daughter was three months old when I first heard the expression “rainbow baby”.
My wife had recounted a conversation in which she was asked: “Is it hard work with number three?”
She replied that happiness had been trumping tired eyes every morning. Baby three was precious and treasured.
She was, after all, a rainbow baby.
Men don’t grow up accustomed to these terms. Or at least this man didn’t. Despite being raised in a house with five women and being a doting father, miscarriage wasn’t something I’d had to find the words to talk about.
“Happily”, I hear you say, to which the answer is: Of course.
However, miscarriages affect pretty much everyone. It was only when we lost the 10-week-old twins that other people shared their stories. Even then, it was almost exclusively women.
Most of the grieving is done by WhatsApp, a cold but useful tool to let people know you’re OK, or to tell them you are, to spare them the effort of trying to find the appropriate words — there are none.
One man tells us his own experience. An electrician we knew of old, and had employed at the time, held forth about his own experience while we all solemnly reflected on the injustice of it all as he perched midway up a ladder.
Women told my wife about their miscarriages; sometimes when she didn’t want to hear about them, other times when she needed the support.
Generally, society continues to keep miscarriage discussions confined to convenient locations and furtive conversations. Fatherhood seems to exist in a different sphere.
On a Friday in 2023, we lost the twins. I was in the office when my wife called to say she felt unwell: A dark, pathetic, guilty day in November. What followed will hopefully always be the worst days of our lives.
As a father, it felt like I should instantly grieve the unborn children, but my entire focus was on their mother. Nothing felt particularly different or unusual in the weeks that followed.
The news came on the radio. The kids kept doing jigsaws. I never met the two we lost. I didn’t hold them or speculate about which of us they looked like.
We had two healthy daughters at home to mind. I knew, if nothing else, I could do that.
However, life would never be the same because of that experience.
Though we wouldn’t have dreamed of telling the oldest daughter what had happened (she was only five), she still drew her first family picture with “the twins” some months later — meaning she must have overheard something she shouldn’t have.
Oddly, the drawing is treasured now because they are part of the family. A part of us, part of our story.
Happiness is our family and the two are part of that — frozen in time.
We moved house quickly afterwards. The new home didn’t feel like a home for a long time. We haven’t framed the Christmas tree decorating pictures from that year. Then, of course, there are the questions over whether you want to “go again”.
People casually talk about how “having two is easy, three is hard” without knowing what we’ve lost.
And then you’re on holiday the following summer when your wife holds your hand and, as the kids run ahead to explore the rock pool, she softly asks you not to have a heart attack when she says her next sentence. “But have you done a test?” I spluttered foolishly. “I don’t need to,” comes the reply.
She tells you what a friend told her about the baby being the one, or ones, that got away, trying to come back. You both cry, one of you possibly for the first time.
Pregnancy goes quickly. Nerves with each scan. Nerves with each lack of kicks. On New Year’s Eve, she doesn’t move for many hours. We contemplate crying off a friend’s party, but she lets us know that won’t be necessary in the nick of time.
She eventually arrives, and after a few days in the hospital, she’s heading home. I’ve forgotten how to do everything. Her head looks wonky in the car seat. That thing the elder girls slept in got recalled, didn’t it? The room is bloody hot. Do they sleep in different clothes during the day?
Mum can’t stop smiling at her. Sisters can’t stop kissing her. The pitter-patter of feet is now a race to see who can get in next to her in bed in the morning. The bed groans at having to accommodate five.
Fatherhood is magic, even when it’s stressful. I never tire of hearing them say “dad” and simultaneously reach for my hand. I feel a physical joy when they develop new interests, explain things to me for the first time (where have axolotls been all my life?), or show confidence in themselves. The same songs come home with daughter two, and it’s like we’re hearing them for the first time. The baby has started gurgling.
Did any baby ever hold their head up and gurgle like that at such a young age? Surely not. So advanced. No need to go again. Our girls are here. The family is complete.
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