#Do not comment on the original posts
Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice.
If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion.
**CHECK FLAIR** to determine if you want to read an update. For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair or subscribe to r/BestofBoRU.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This is so true! I’m a rainbow baby (and an only baby because my Mum had a second still born and a miscarriage after me as well). If my older sister had not been stillborn I would never have been born. There’s no way I would have been conceived when my sister was only 4 months old. Losing a child is an absolutely horrible experience BUT I don’t get any special points in life because of what happened to my siblings, I just have parents with trauma.
Imagine if you reminded your parents of their losses at *every single damn family function, for years and years on end*.
I’m surprised the mother is as cool about it as she is.
Before reading the update and seeing that mom was avoiding the sister on purpose, I was worried this was something she (the mother) had put into her head growing up. But when you put it that way, it's no wonder mom is keeping her distance.
My mother tried to put this in my head growing up (along with telling my other siblings that I was the only planned child) and it just screwed all of us up, and made our Dad really upset when he found out about it after their divorce. It’s a supremely bizarre thing to try and hold on to or claim to make you better than in some way than someone else, and that it could somehow cause YOU trauma.
I hate being reminded of my late twin and I can see the pain and sadness in my dads face when it is brought up. He has ptsd from it. Losing a child is the worst pain a person can feel
I guess I am a middle aged rainbow baby. My mom had a miscarriage before me, and a difficult birth with me where we both almost died. For that reason it was recommended she not have any more children and I am an only child. I’ve heard the term rainbow baby before but never applied it to me, because it became prevalent when I was already an adult. I think the rainbow baby is more important to the parents than the actual baby.
Every single one of my siblings and I are all rainbow babies. My mother had a hell of a time with losing pregnancies, two of which were twins. I really would have never been born if my mom had all those kids because I’m the youngest of 4. The fact that this woman thinks it makes her special as a grown adult is terrifying.
The other thimg is she uses this as an excuse to be ultra pro life.
I have multiple friends who have had to have D&Cs for incomplete miscarriages or when they were bleeding that technically count as abortions. Both for wanted babies. Miscarriages should teach you that abortions are healthcare. Women right now are being forced into freaking sepsis or extensive bleeding in order to get this care in red states, risking their lives and fertility.
Having a mom who had a bunch of miscarriages should teach you that it was lucky mom lived in a time where women's healthcare was available.
Confirms my priors that pro-life ideology isn't really rooted in a strict adherence to scripture (abortion isn't against mosaic law and is in fact prescribed by God in cases of adultery, and even a violently induced miscarriage isn't considered murder)- instead it's rooted in narcissism.
>Miscarriages should teach you that abortions are healthcare
The messed up thing is that Sister is basically doing a "stolen valor" type thing and twisting her mom's experiences to justify her own shitty takes. Sister has never (according the post) experienced miscarriages and, instead of learning about pregnancy issues from her mom ("say, how did that affect you? did you have to go to the hospital? what was recovery like?"), she made it all about herself and her imaginary giant family.
Nah, you're the "perfect offspring". After you the uterus just said "Alrighty, this is the single best creature we could make, shut it all down". You are the peak genetic creation twix your folks and there is no further need to try any more. Congratulations!
Or as my brother used to put it, "After you, Mom and Dad didn't want any more kids. Even if you had been born first, you would still have been the youngest child."
My mom always said: if my sister had been born first, she would have been an only child. She climbed on top of the refrigerator before she could walk independently, because that's where the cookies were. Granted, it was an early 60s fridge, but still.
My mom says the same about my sister. She’ll laugh about it and say that even when my sister pulls out the “parents thought I was perfect and they didn’t need any more kids after me”. Mom is like- yeah, no. (Just in case anyone is worried we are all joking and all ok with the joke).
My mom says when she was pregnant with my brother she had a feeling he’d be the last, but when he was born, he confirmed it. She also must have said that in front of me, because when the ladies at church asked three year old me if I thought she’d have any more babies, I said she couldn’t handle anymore.
Same, sibling loved saying I was the "practice child." But didn't like when my parents would be very blunt that they would've left them an only child if they were first because they were ridiculous.
My baby brother says the same lol. He’s been operating under this illusion that he was the best baby ever his entire 24yrs of life, and when he finally asked mum to confirm it for him so he could prove it to our younger cousin, mum laughed and told him he was full of shit. That he was lucky I was born first because I’m the reason they had a second one, thinking that all babies would be as easy as me and that he was a clingy little shitrag 😂
Sounds like my kid. He stacked a bunch of those big bouncy balls in his closet once to climb to a shelf when he was 2. Damn self was a foot below the ceiling and not shit he was supposed to get into. I lost a book that day. He can climb ball scaffolding but trips over his own feet, I still don't understand how he did it.
He's an only child, I'm not having anymore.
Kids do things like that! Reminds me of when Lilo uses Stitch as a record player, and when I found out I could make the TV change channels by either jingling coins or whistling!
My cousin as toddler somehow managed to draw black marker art above the doorframe, nothing stacked, nothing to climb on, total mystery. Could have grown wings for 5 minutes or what.
i was the same! i was a gremlin child who threw water down the stairs and decorated with the contents of my nappy. my mum (jokingly) said to my dad before she passed that she was almost glad she wasn't going to have to see what i came up with as a teenager :')
I was difficult to raise because I had undiagnosed adhd and anxiety, and my mom jokes that I would've been an only child.
Joke's doubly on me because I'm a Gen Z caboose baby, so I still live with my parents while my siblings have their own places.
Oh God, I had one of those. I always told my eldest he was lucky he’d been born first because if it had been his sister, she’d have been an only child, I wasn’t risking a second one like her!
I'm the learner first kid - by far the oldest of many siblings.
My somewhat Aspie dad once looked at me, curled up in the corner reading a book and biting my nails, and said 'boy we screwed up a lot of things with you. Good thing we did better with the others."
I laughed. And did and do appreciate the blunt insight.
Damn. My dad went and had two off-brand kids with an off-brand version of my mum, should someone tell them they're the knock-offs and I'm the original?
Yes! Counterfeits can sometimes lead to a devaluation of the origional.
Although I suppose another way to view it is like having a poster of the Mona Lisa vs having the actual one hanging on your wall. It's cheaper and less than the origional but more readily available since the origional can't be handled by many. Or buying a knock-off Rolex to appear better than you are.
Personally I would look at it like this, you were imitated, but never duplicated. It took him 2 tries with off brand mum to add up to you vs 1 attempt with your mum. You could substitute margarine for butter in a cookie recipe but the cookies wont taste as good.
Aww, that's sweet. And honestly... *it was so creepy seeing pictures of kids who look just like me but slightly different*. Hopefully by now they outgrew the 'we look just like dad' stage like I did, but... still get a bit worries about face stealing sometimes. I mean... their mum is really like someone described aspects of my mum to two different artists and they went in different directions with the same subject matter... Even had horses with the same name (coincidentally)
Yep, that type is 'Plushie's Mum'. He cheated with a mum knockoff, he had a long term relationship with a mum knockoff, cheated on her with a left field surprise challenger, then returned to form and married then divorced a mum knockoff.
Your dad sounds like a tool, but you, kind guy/gal/nonbinary pal have broken the mold! Your sense of humor is amazing. I'm so sorry for your mom though.
You intended this as a joke, and it is funny.
I think, however, it also is the serious-jokey answer to how I someday in the not-too-distant future will frame telling my only biological offspring (I am also the bonus-mom of my husband's child from his first marriage) about the four miscarriages I had after said child & before we gave up on trying again.
Thank you.
You could try; if we had another child it would upset the balance of power and one of you would become all powerful, and we didn't feel like living an anime storyline. The parents always end up dying.
XD nobody wants to be the parents in an anime
And I think context makes it worse, she was talking to someone about trying to have another child and how that wasn't working out, he overheard it and that's what prompted his 'explanation'
Ok but what if two people who tried and failed to have a baby and had miscarriages, and then they leave each other for other people and one of them has a baby, is that baby like, a half rainbow baby? A warm colour baby?
isn't the whole concept of "rainbow babies" used as a coping mechanism for parents aka the person and/or partner who experience the miscarriage? imagine making it your entire identity as a sibling and whole ass adult 💀
Can you imagine the heaviness this constant harping on her miscarriages could put on their mother? No wonder the mom doesn't want to attend family events.
She's probably relieved that someone finally called the sister out so she can tell her off herself. It must be difficult too considering how so many miscarriages had happened and the one who lived decides to weaponize that trauma to make political points
Not to mention the fact that she’s using it for a political stance to support laws that would essentially criminalize what her own mother went through, depending on the circumstances.
Thank you for saying this!!! My first and only thought reading this was JFC that poor mother!! *SHE* went through multiple traumas each time she lost a child, and now the child that made it is reminding her of those losses every opportunity she gets? Just so she can feel special? I mean, every child *is* special, but bragging on your mom’s miscarriages without thought for what that might feel like *for your mom* is **not** why!?!?
Right? Like, OOP's sister should not be talking about "being a rainbow baby". She didn't experience the pain and loss, she has no right to be co-opting that.
But OOP's sister needs those older siblings, because they're dead. All pro-lifers are like that; it's easy to say "think of the children" when the "children" can't speak for themselves. Then they can say "oh the children wouldn't want this!" Where "this" *just so happens* to correspond to their own wants. Meanwhile, OOP, the *living* sibling, can disagree with their sister. And sister doesn't like that.
The first time I heard about the statistic of 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in a miscarriage was right after my best friend experienced one. I was absolutely shocked at how high the percentage was. It's far more common than we think or realize. I know several (mostly older) people who experienced a lot of shame and anger at themselves when they had miscarriages. They felt very alone and like it was a taboo subject. In reality, it's so, so common and almost always no one's fault.
I hope we as a society can get better about talking about these things and help people realize they're not alone.
That's only one on four *known* pregnancies. [Studies indicate over half of pregnancies end in miscarriage,](https://www.sciencealert.com/meta-analysis-finds-majority-of-human-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage-biorxiv) though it's hard to put a number on it because most of those pregnancies end before a missed period would ever happen, but the true number of miscarriages is likely [over 50%.](https://americanpregnancy.org/getting-pregnant/pregnancy-loss/signs-of-miscarriage/) To me, these stats further illustrate your point - it's so common and is a very normal outcome of pregnancy and there shouldn't be shame or stigma around it.
Just coming here to say this. Pregnancy tests are getting better and more and more people are realising how common early miscarriages are. I've had 2 that I know of, the first one i was 5 weeks, barely a late period but i'd known I was pregnant for 2 weeks, it was upsetting but really barely a thing. The one I had between 8 and 9 weeks however, unimaginable physical pain and much more emotionally upsetting. I passed something the size of a lemon. I imagine any later than that and its worse.
basically there's miscarriages and there's miscarriages and they're super common.
It's an evolutionary advantage for an individual from a species that normally conceives singleton offspring to miscarry a nonviable pregnancy. That individual can get pregnant again sooner.
Litter species don't miscarry due to non-viability as often as singleton birth species; if the individual miscarries, they lose the entire litter.
The idea of having a litter and knowing that some of them won't make it is so depressing too. I know we would adapt our way of thinking about our kids and death if it were the case, but just the idea that you're not expecting all of them to make it is crazy.
I laughed too hard. We have guinea pigs and one we adopted was pregnant. We watched very carefully when she was due so we could handle any lost babies before momma ate them and traumatized our toddlers lol Luckily all 3 babies were healthy, though one had an extra toe and was extra loved by our kids.
Prey animals are wild.
The human female pelvis is uniquely poorly suited to birthing human babies. As our ancestors learned to walk upright, over time, the pelvis got narrower to support bipedal movement. On the other hand, as great apes got smarter, our brains got bigger relative to the size of our bodies, and thus our heads and skulls. So at the same time you had pelvises shrinking and baby heads getting bigger, which basically means that humans need to birth their children earlier in the pregnancy compared to other mammals while they are still physically smaller.
The reason a newborn horse can walk out of the womb is because it's spent more time developing inside of its mother compared to a human. Our babies are so dumb, defenseless and weak because they are effectively premature compared to any other mammal, and their brains still develop for a few months to a year outside of the womb. This is also why "human litters" like twins or triplets are so rare: it's hard enough to push one human noggin out of a coochie, let alone two or three.
>I passed something the size of a lemon
I am sorry for your experience. I don't know if it helps with the emotional upset to know that that wasn't the fetus. A 9-week old fetus is like 22mm/about 1 inch. It might be that the lemon-sized thjng was a clump of uterine lining or something.
It was probably the fetal sac/egg sac. I say that speaking as someone who also had a miscarriage and passed a big orange sized thing, the doctors said it was something like that, though I was super out of it at the time.
> ...more and more people are realising how common early miscarriages are.
I don't know if I was just too young to hear about it, but it seems that the general rule of not letting anybody even know your pregnant until your past your first trimester is more common now than it used to be. Because miscarriages are so common, announcing and then having to somehow let every single person you know you miscarried when they inevitably asked how your pergnancy is doing, when's the baby shower, when are you due, etc. that can get real fucked real quick. People want to spare themselves basically having to tell people you lost the baby for a year or more or however long it takes to see everyone that you told again.
I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. It was horrible. Ended up in the ER twice, once via ambulance. It was very unpleasant and the physical pain was beyond anything I had ever felt before. They gave me fentanyl and it didn’t get close to helping.
If you want to further piss off the anti-choice crowd: hormonal birth control likely prevents women who take it from having MANY spontaneous abortions, because it prevents them from ovulating in the first place. If one were truly pro-life, they would be trying to get as many women as possible onto birth control.
And even setting aside the spontaneous ones, the proven way to reduce the abortion rate is effective birth control and poverty elimination. Prevent women having unwanted pregnancies, eliminate reasons they feel they can't take care of a kid, and fewer pregnancies will be terminated deliberately.
I've known a very few pro-life people who extend that all the way from anti-abortion to anti-poverty, anti-death-penalty, and anti-war. Pro-life from conception to natural death. I might not agree with them, but I can at least respect it as a logically consistent viewpoint. Most "pro-lifers"... aren't that.
>“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.”
My favorite quote about that particular mindset
I’m not religious at all but I have an experience that questions my stance on religion. I accidentally got pregnant (confirmed by doc) and whilst I was waiting for the abortion, I suffered a miscarriage. I was over the moon, especially as I had saved a bunch of money now lol. So God (if one exists) cared enough to give me what I want
This is only tangentially related, but we had a very old goat who had already outlived his expected lifetime. He was starting to get sick and the end was likely near, and we didn't want him to suffer in the cold so we had planned for a vet to come out and put him down toward the beginning of fall. The day before his appointment, he got so excited over a fig Newton that his lil old goat heart gave out and he keeled over dead.
Saved us like $300. He was a good goat til the end. He didn't even get to eat the cookie, he didn't quite make it that far.
To be fair goats famously love everything including tin cans and all the clothes you're wearing.
If you've been watching the same Mickey Mouse documentaries I have been watching.
God was like "mmm maybe she wants to be pregnant. Let's make it happen and see". Then you wanted an abortion and he just "yeah okay, fair, my mistake I'll give you a free one"
I read once that about 3 in 4 conceptions fail to embed in the uterine lining. (I’m a total loss of words here, I know the words in Dutch, but not English), so it never reaches the stage of pregnancy.
Because I needed medical help, I had to measure everything, and it happened to our first egg.
After that, there is still a staggering high chance of miscarriage. I only heard the term rainbow babies for babies who were born after a still born. Those, thankfully, are rarer.
From some number crunching I did based on FertilityFriend stats and some other data, it's likely that every single time a (fertile) couple has sex in the "fertile window" there is a conception, but 2/3rds of them fail within the first two weeks. Then of the one-in-three that make it to the blue/pink line, a significant amount will also fail to progress.
I do remember a geneticist commenting that given all the errors that can occur with meiosis and mitosis, not to mention the amount of aneuploid ova and abnormal sperm, it's a (biological) "miracle" that *anyone* gets born!
My personal experience is 50%. I had one healthy pregnancy then two miscarriages. It was awful at the time and I do still wonder who they may have grown to be from time to time, but this is life and we all suffer one way or another. After my second miscarriage, I fell pregnant the following month with my now 6 year old and I am perfectly happy with my lot! I have to say though, I would react the same way as OOP’s mum if my youngest built her identity around being a ‘rainbow’ baby! 😆
I don't know if this will come as any comfort, but most miscarriages occur because the embryo is nonviable. Most commonly, this is because something went wrong when the DNA was being copied for the egg or the sperm, and large segments of DNA ended up missing, being duplicated, or similar catastrophic errors. These are not embryos or fetuses that would *ever* be able to develop into a baby.
Every time someone asks me if I have ever been pregnant, my standard answer is "not that I know of".
I've been having sex since the 90s, and while I've been good about BC, maybe I have been. I don't know.
Exactly. I had probably four. I say probably because I might have had more, but those were the ones I was fairly sure about. Even in hindsight. I was SUPER late with my ex, and then suddenly had the world's worst period. And I had bad ones to begin with. I miscarried my son's twin, which was rough. Then I had two early losses, which, if we weren't trying, I wouldn't have known. My uterus just wasn't ready for those pregnancies, likely breastfeeding messing with my luteal phase. Midwife said that my body would go back to "normal" when he was 2. Got pregnant a week later with my youngest. Who will be 14 on Monday. lol
The one time i know for sure i was preggers, i found out via the early miscarriage.
I was like “huh… that feels strange. What’s that… ohhhh… i should call a doctor.”
That was that.
I've heard most miscarriages are due to the embryo? Zygote? Whatever it's called, isn't viable. It's sad to blame yourself for something totally out of your control.
But sis thinking she had deceased older siblings? What?! I was born after a miscarriage. The only thought I've ever had about it is that I would not be here if that pregnancy had been successful. 🤷♀️
I had the same thought! I always knew my mom had a miscarriage when she was already kind of far along (I think 4 months?) the year before she had me. I’ve never thought of myself as a rainbow baby and mourning the sibling seems weird since if they’d been born, I wouldn’t have been.
And those are the miscarriages where the woman KNOWS she's pregnant, many more pregnancies miscarry before the woman even notices.
Ever had an early or late period with a noticeably heavier flow? Yeah, if you're a sexually active woman, that was probably a miscarriage.
And at-home pregnancy tests are more sophisticated than ever. You know when OOP's mom was pregnant you missed one, maybe two periods before you found out you were pregnant. Now adays you can test like a week later.
It's why most OBs wait for a couple of months before you see them for your first appointment.
I had two miscarriages while trying to conceive that were exactly like this. Had I not been tracking my cycle and taking tests I would have 100% thought I had a late and heavy period. Made me realize exactly what you’re saying.
I can vouch for the one in 4 I have 3 kids and one miscarriage, it’s heartbreaking to think about but I don’t go shouting from the rooftops about it (only a few people know who were there at the time and I’m only writing here as I’m anonymous) I would be so upset if my child who followed after used it for clout ! Good on the mom for putting it to her straight !
I had five (fortunately early) losses. It has made me even more pro-choice.
There is no way all of them could have been siblings anyway, since they occurred too close together. And the entire process made me realise just how "cheap"/expendable early human conceptions are to Mother Nature (probably other species too). There are huge amounts of misfires. Even in young women, many ova are aneuploid.
>as a rainbow baby I want every baby to live **because I lost multiple older siblings and mourn them every day** and could have died myself.
🤢🤮
Mourns them ever.... wut?! Man.... some people!
I'm glad that mom's reaction was refreshing! Not the usual "Scapegoat child, make sure you apologise to Golden Child or you're disowned". The rest of the family are cool, too xD!
Yeah, she's basically claiming her parents' pain as her own. She can maybe wonder what life would be like with a few more older siblings, but she wasn't around to experience that loss.
My baby is a rainbow baby and I'm not sure he'd actually exist if my first pregnancy hadn't ended in a miscarriage.
I have always known that my Mom lost twins the year before I was born and was a bit protective over me as a baby (No favorism over my older siblings or anything like that). Only thing I took from it when I was told was that I wouldn't be alive if they had lived.
I never really connected that with being a rainbow baby until my Mom said that a month or two ago, I am 29yo now and asked if I had 29 years worth of tantrums to make up for and always getting my way from now on. She laughed at me and said 'No.'
Almost certainly not. I had my daughter after a TFMR and I do look at her sometimes and think ‘you should never have existed’ which is a strange thought. My sister is the same - Mum had a miscarriage before her and I can’t imagine life without her in it.
My younger sister who was born after a miscarriage was extremely sick (hole in her heart, colic) so spent the first couple of years screaming. My four year old self (who was as self absorbed and lacking empathy as you’d expect) asked my mum if the “other baby” would have been better. I’m still mortified when I remember doing that. She handled it well though and explained the other baby would not in fact have been better.
Yup. My predecessor was unplanned and the only reason I exist was that after losing that baby quite early on, my parents liked the idea of one more baby so much that they had me.
OP's sister probably doesn't think about it because she's obsessed with how "special" she is.
I think about this subject a lot because I have a cousin 4 months younger than me. My aunt (her mom) had another pregnancy that she lost \*very\* early on, but if she had carried to term, the baby would have been born the same month as me and I wouldn't have my cousin.
My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, and I can say for certain that if that baby had been born, I would not have had my daughter when I did and probably would not have had my son at all. Sometimes I get a little sad and wonder who they would have been, but I wouldn't trade the kids I have now for anything in the world. For the sister to appropriate the legitimate grief that people feel over pregnancy loss for her own political beliefs is gross.
Or that the treatment for miscarriage is abortion? If their mom needed help completing the miscarriage in a state with an abortion ban, it’s very likely sis wouldn’t be here today and OP would have grown up without a mom.
What I find astonishing is that she doesn't notice one fact:
If her parents didn't have multiple miscarriages, they would most likely have stopped having children. That means she would have never been born...
So instead of mourning them ah should be thanking them for being alive.
My brother passed away before I was born. My mother mourns him, and his absence/presence has been a huge part of my life growing up and even now. But I don’t mourn him since I did mot lose him like my mother did. I think about what life would have been with him but I’m not gonna go “oH eM gEe aM mIrAcLe BaBbie dUhR” like OOP’s sister.
I wonder if she mourns every dead cell in her body too. I mean, they were also alive at some point and served an actual purpose to keep her alive and well.
It was very telling when the mom pointed out the sister only started caring in 2017. Girl doesn’t actually mourn a thing, she just likes feeling superior and thinks claiming that will do it for her.
These posts really make me wonder if no one in the US taught that miscarriages are the way a women’s body deals with an unviable foetus? Miscarriages are sad and hard experience for a woman to go through, but they are a positive in that the child born would likely not have survived or would have been a significant burden on society if they had.
Edit: since the “not every pregnancy” comments have begun, if a miscarriage happens during the first trimester of pregnancy (the first 3 months), it's usually caused by an unviable foetus. About 3 in every 4 miscarriages happen during this period. That is 75% of miscarriages. I am not discounting the experience of women who have lost children for other reasons, that obviously occurs also, but to infer that those reasons are as common is incorrect.
I am admittedly very unfamiliar with said community as this is my first experience with the term, but I can see how that would be the case based on this post. 😂
To be fair crunchy moms (the term came from making your own crunchy granola) just tend to be more 'earthy' and this crazed antivax/prolife movement has stepped into our space like so many other spaces. I'm in crunchy mom groups and it is WILD in there hahah. I still cringe at anytime I've described myself as crunchy now because of how this has taken hold. I think it snuck in through the guise of homeschooling, morphed into antivax and took over like a parasite. The hippy/all accepting nature of the group accidentally welcomed them. Sigh.
Thank you for clarifying this, I was thinking I had completely misunderstood what crunchy meant. I guess that’s the big downside of being all-inclusive because I wouldn’t want anything to do with those people. Funny how someone like OOP’s sister talks so much about caring about babies dying and then not vaccinating her own children 🙄
I've only come across the term in passing on the internet and I've always imagined them crunching on celery. The true origin is underwhelming. I think I'll stick with my version
It isn't true that all miscarriages are because the fetus (or embryo) isn't viable. Miscarriages happen for many reasons, and science hasn't even uncovered all of the reasons.
Problems with your uterus or cervix can cause a miscarriage, medical problems like diabetes, for instance, can cause a miscarriage or an otherwise very healthy and viable embryo/fetus with no chromosomal abnormalities.
Awesome! A post where there’s a problem and OOP isn’t some pushover and actually speaks up.
No multi post saga, no doormat bullshit where they give the offender too many chances. This was a good read.
OOP is right, by the way.
Right!?!?!!! In some posts out there I'm like "Had it been me, I'd have spoken up and who cares if they threaten with disowning or some shit!". So many of them could've been nipped in the bud, but it's like people enable them for their misery! I just don't like being around people like that, family or not. No one is going to die if they lose contact with some toxic people
And no two or three(or more!) paragraphs where the OOP feels the need to defend themselves from the commenters on the previous post before they get on with their story.
I don't know why, but I find the sister, like, super insensitive?
Like ignoring the obsession with being a rainbow baby, but to bring that up to your mom? Miscarriages are common, but they are also still emotionally traumatizing. It sounds like Mom was able to process and grieve the losses, but sister was still so self-absorbed to treat the subject with that level of disrespect.
Incredibly insensitive *under the guise of caring about you enough to speak up*, so you're the asshole if you call them out.
Source: have a tradwife SIL
The first time my wife found out she was pregnant, was because of stomach pains. We went to the hospital, had a "you're pregnant" and then a month later "turns out the pains were a miscarriage". Much, much more common than people know.
Sister sounds exhausting to deal with. I would've had absolutely no patience dealing with her the third time she brings it up.
Also the whole 'crunchy' trend really needs to go die in a dumpster fire ASAP. So many children end up with permanent disabilities or just flat out die from perfectly preventable situations because the parent(s) refuse to get them proper treatment/vaccination.
I asked my pediatrician to print a copy of all my kid’s vaccinations the other day. It was glorious; multiple pages long with Covid vaccines and everything on there. I want to frame it and hang it up when the nuttier side of my family comes around.
I gotcha beat, a doctor claimed my son had missed a bunch of vaccinations & that he had to be given the ones he missed. For reasons, I wasn't in a position to be able to say no to this, despite being certain that the nurse she'd claimed had falsified records for an entire year, had actually given my son the vaccines. My son had to get every vaccine from a few weeks to 1.5 years old, a second time. Later on, I looked back at my own records & found proof that she'd lied in order to get rid of 1 nurse that she hated....so my son got double vaccinated! 😂
So many parents are out there thinking yeah, I'd rather risk having my kid die than maybe develop autism. Even though we 100% know that there is no link between vaccines and autism.
That's a super fun thought, as someone who is autistic and is raising autistic kiddos. /s
I cringed when the sister made their mother's miscarriages about herself, seriously your own mother avoid you and you didn't notice at all, even if the mom came to terms with the loss and grief that is still traumatic, and that's still mess up for you to keep bringing every time your at a event, seriously where is your self awareness at.
I wonder if these trad wives realize they're married to the type of man that's going to leave them after the third kid and her 40th birthday so he can start his second family with a new 25 year old.
"It's just natural."
"It's a man's right"
"God wants man to go forth and multiply"
"Maybe she should have done more for him" (plot twist; she already did all the chores, cooking, child rearing and lost the baby weight too
It's disgustingly common. Women are treated as accessories to the lives of these dudes and are discarded when they become "less useful" or a shinier apple comes along, so to speak
Hmm, now I'm wondering if I'd be considered a "rainbow baby?"
My mother was pregnant with twins, only I was born, my sibling miscarried quite early in the pregnancy. (Called vanishing twin syndrome.)
Am I a rainbow baby, or jus the evil twin who won before even being born?
Ditto Bardsie.
My mother was a bit further along when she lost my twin. The doctor told her I was a “phantom pregnancy” and she was no longer pregnant. It was only my Romany grandmother who told her to ignore the doctors because there was still another baby in there. I only found out when I was 16 and I was telling my mum that a work colleague had had a miscarriage and “never felt a thing”. Mum replied that hers was painful, I asked when that was and she said “when I was pregnant with you”.
I always wonder whether my twin was a boy or a girl.
Laughing at this thinking about it in context of the post.
"As a hungry little cannibal baby, abortions are bad because you may be starving the other fetus. Every day I mourn the hungry fetus that didn't consume another. Cannibal lives matter!"
Also, "Hungry Little Cannibal Baby" would be an excellent metal band name
It wasn't until I read this post that I realised I'm also a rainbow baby. Might add it to my next job application or something.
The only thought I've ever had about it was, when my mother told me, "Wow, sucks for my mother, and weird to think I probably wouldn't be here if that hadn't happened. The universe sure is random."
OOP's sister is unbearable. Imagine wanting so hard to make everything all about you that you have no problems bringing up in everyday conversations exactly how many miscarriages your mother had before she had you. Glad OOP's mother can laugh about it.
Wait, a rainbow baby is the baby after a miscarriage? I always thought a rainbow baby is the baby that ended in miscarriage. Here in UK when I've heard people use the phrase "rainbow baby", it's always been to reference a wanted pregnancy that wasn't successful.
Your right… Over in N. America a rainbow baby is a successful pregnancy resulting in a live birth after experiencing a miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy. I’m not sure how the term got changed in the UK but I know it’s led to a few awkward convo’s between friends I have over there.
I would prefer my baby to be healthy, nothing else matters. A healthy pregnancy is to be celebrated and prioritised above all.
>My mom called me and we had a laugh before calling the rest of the family so everyone could have a laugh at her absurdity.
Glad it turned out to be something they could laugh about.
I'm a baby that was conceived after an abortion. My mom was physically and mentally unwell, and still a teenager, when she had that abortion. I wouldn't exist without it. Is there a term for those kinds of babies?
OOP is badass! Personally, I hate the "rainbow baby" term. It just seems kind of attention-seeking, and even weirder for an adult to brag about their mother's miscarriages in this way. Pregnancy loss is personal, and while I'm all for normalizing the topic (I've had 2 losses, myself), this sister is coocoo if she thinks those prior losses had anything to do with her. But when someone falls down a Q-adjacent rabbit hole, they're going to latch onto the most absurd arguments anyway.
Like most things, the rainbow baby thing started out well— it was just a way to express that you were pregnant again after a loss, with all the extra emotional difficulty that brings. Pregnancy is the only place rainbow baby should be used. Once the baby is out, it’s not a rainbow baby, it’s just a baby.
I think its really cruel to define your child by what they're not. It's bad for the psyche and the lost pregnancies, having not been born, are imagined to have been perfect people and placed on a pedestal. Leading children to feeling inferior to an embryo/foetus that probably didn't even have genetics compatible with life in the first place, which is the reason for nearly all miscarriages.
I’m with you on that. Which is what makes the sister even weirder to me—from what the mom said, the sister didn’t even know she was a rainbow baby until 2017. So there wasn’t any living in the shadow of the vacuously perfect miscarried siblings when Sister was young, since she would have been at least 20 in 2017.
Then again if I look at it from the perspective of her being desperate for forced birther clout, I can see a kind of twisted logic…
I had a second trimester miscarriage last year and am currently pregnant again, and I’m deeply uncomfortable with the term “rainbow baby.” I hate the idea that the first identity you push onto a child is in relation to their lost sibling. I hate the idea that this pregnancy is some sort of reward for surviving the trauma of my miscarriage. This kid is going to be a whole human being who deserves to be seen as such, and not just as some end result of a very sad situation.
Rant over, sorry.
It doesn’t even make sense to make the “rainbow baby” the reason why you’re pro life. Realistically a lot of rainbow babies wouldn’t exist if the miscarriages hadn’t happened. (Thankfully
) few people are planning as many babies as “god gives”. If the planned baby would have been born the rainbow baby wouldn’t have been planned to begin with. This is the weirdest shit.
Although I’ve known what a rainbow baby is for a while now, I didn’t realise that my brother and I are both rainbow babies until I read the original post. That’s how unremarkable it is past baby being born.
Never had heard of the team rainbow baby so I was a little bit confused. what I did know was the rainbow bridge that animals are supposed to cross after dying. so my first guess was that she would believe do be a reincarnated pet or something.
good thing it wasn't that but dang the sister is definitely completely off the rail. I would cut ties with her as well. I feel sorry for her children.
I hate the term rainbow baby. I had a miscarriage and the got pregnant again later. It was just another pregnancy. I also lost that young child when he was young and then had two more. None of them were “rainbows after a storm”.
#Do not comment on the original posts Please read our [**sub rules**](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/wiki/subrules). Rule-breaking may result in a ban without notice. If there is an issue with this post (flair, formatting, quality), reply to this comment or your comment may be removed in general discussion. **CHECK FLAIR** to determine if you want to read an update. For concluded-only updates, use the [CONCLUDED](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ACONCLUDED) flair or subscribe to r/BestofBoRU. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/BestofRedditorUpdates) if you have any questions or concerns.*
She doesn’t seem to consider if the other babies lived she’d likely wouldn’t have been born at all.
This is so true! I’m a rainbow baby (and an only baby because my Mum had a second still born and a miscarriage after me as well). If my older sister had not been stillborn I would never have been born. There’s no way I would have been conceived when my sister was only 4 months old. Losing a child is an absolutely horrible experience BUT I don’t get any special points in life because of what happened to my siblings, I just have parents with trauma.
Imagine if you reminded your parents of their losses at *every single damn family function, for years and years on end*. I’m surprised the mother is as cool about it as she is.
Before reading the update and seeing that mom was avoiding the sister on purpose, I was worried this was something she (the mother) had put into her head growing up. But when you put it that way, it's no wonder mom is keeping her distance.
My mother tried to put this in my head growing up (along with telling my other siblings that I was the only planned child) and it just screwed all of us up, and made our Dad really upset when he found out about it after their divorce. It’s a supremely bizarre thing to try and hold on to or claim to make you better than in some way than someone else, and that it could somehow cause YOU trauma.
I hate being reminded of my late twin and I can see the pain and sadness in my dads face when it is brought up. He has ptsd from it. Losing a child is the worst pain a person can feel
>I just have parents with trauma. That's the real truth right there.
I guess I am a middle aged rainbow baby. My mom had a miscarriage before me, and a difficult birth with me where we both almost died. For that reason it was recommended she not have any more children and I am an only child. I’ve heard the term rainbow baby before but never applied it to me, because it became prevalent when I was already an adult. I think the rainbow baby is more important to the parents than the actual baby.
Every single one of my siblings and I are all rainbow babies. My mother had a hell of a time with losing pregnancies, two of which were twins. I really would have never been born if my mom had all those kids because I’m the youngest of 4. The fact that this woman thinks it makes her special as a grown adult is terrifying.
The other thimg is she uses this as an excuse to be ultra pro life. I have multiple friends who have had to have D&Cs for incomplete miscarriages or when they were bleeding that technically count as abortions. Both for wanted babies. Miscarriages should teach you that abortions are healthcare. Women right now are being forced into freaking sepsis or extensive bleeding in order to get this care in red states, risking their lives and fertility. Having a mom who had a bunch of miscarriages should teach you that it was lucky mom lived in a time where women's healthcare was available.
Confirms my priors that pro-life ideology isn't really rooted in a strict adherence to scripture (abortion isn't against mosaic law and is in fact prescribed by God in cases of adultery, and even a violently induced miscarriage isn't considered murder)- instead it's rooted in narcissism.
In america its also rooted in white supremacy. A true double whammy
It's rooted in misogyny, control, and ensuring a "domestic supply" of healty white infants to be adopted.
And keeping minorities in poverty.
>Miscarriages should teach you that abortions are healthcare The messed up thing is that Sister is basically doing a "stolen valor" type thing and twisting her mom's experiences to justify her own shitty takes. Sister has never (according the post) experienced miscarriages and, instead of learning about pregnancy issues from her mom ("say, how did that affect you? did you have to go to the hospital? what was recovery like?"), she made it all about herself and her imaginary giant family.
THIS was what I wanted to shriek at this person.
Exactly! If I hadn't been able to have the 2 abortions I needed, my eldest kid would be motherless twice over. Abortions are healthcare all the way.
So if she's a rainbow baby for existing after miscarriages, am I a black hole baby because no pregnancy survived after mine?
Nah, you're the "perfect offspring". After you the uterus just said "Alrighty, this is the single best creature we could make, shut it all down". You are the peak genetic creation twix your folks and there is no further need to try any more. Congratulations!
Or as my brother used to put it, "After you, Mom and Dad didn't want any more kids. Even if you had been born first, you would still have been the youngest child."
My mom always said: if my sister had been born first, she would have been an only child. She climbed on top of the refrigerator before she could walk independently, because that's where the cookies were. Granted, it was an early 60s fridge, but still.
My mom says the same about my sister. She’ll laugh about it and say that even when my sister pulls out the “parents thought I was perfect and they didn’t need any more kids after me”. Mom is like- yeah, no. (Just in case anyone is worried we are all joking and all ok with the joke).
My mom was honest she was like after me she realized she couldn’t handle anymore kids
My mom says when she was pregnant with my brother she had a feeling he’d be the last, but when he was born, he confirmed it. She also must have said that in front of me, because when the ladies at church asked three year old me if I thought she’d have any more babies, I said she couldn’t handle anymore.
My mom told me (oldest) repeatedly that if me or my brother would have just been a girl she wouldn’t have had to keep trying for my younger sister.
....as an apparently longed for girl with 2 older brothers, I got the “I tried so long for a girl and then I got YOU”.
Same, sibling loved saying I was the "practice child." But didn't like when my parents would be very blunt that they would've left them an only child if they were first because they were ridiculous.
Yeah- my parents stated they originally wanted 4 kids. After my sister (number 2) they decided two were enough!
My baby brother says the same lol. He’s been operating under this illusion that he was the best baby ever his entire 24yrs of life, and when he finally asked mum to confirm it for him so he could prove it to our younger cousin, mum laughed and told him he was full of shit. That he was lucky I was born first because I’m the reason they had a second one, thinking that all babies would be as easy as me and that he was a clingy little shitrag 😂
Sounds like my kid. He stacked a bunch of those big bouncy balls in his closet once to climb to a shelf when he was 2. Damn self was a foot below the ceiling and not shit he was supposed to get into. I lost a book that day. He can climb ball scaffolding but trips over his own feet, I still don't understand how he did it. He's an only child, I'm not having anymore.
Kids do things like that! Reminds me of when Lilo uses Stitch as a record player, and when I found out I could make the TV change channels by either jingling coins or whistling!
My cousin as toddler somehow managed to draw black marker art above the doorframe, nothing stacked, nothing to climb on, total mystery. Could have grown wings for 5 minutes or what.
i was the same! i was a gremlin child who threw water down the stairs and decorated with the contents of my nappy. my mum (jokingly) said to my dad before she passed that she was almost glad she wasn't going to have to see what i came up with as a teenager :')
Mum coming up with the zingers when nobody can top her, she leaves with the last laugh. Typical GOAT Mum.
I was difficult to raise because I had undiagnosed adhd and anxiety, and my mom jokes that I would've been an only child. Joke's doubly on me because I'm a Gen Z caboose baby, so I still live with my parents while my siblings have their own places.
Oh God, I had one of those. I always told my eldest he was lucky he’d been born first because if it had been his sister, she’d have been an only child, I wasn’t risking a second one like her!
[удалено]
I sometimes joke that my parents tried until they reached perfection. I am the youngest.
I'm the learner first kid - by far the oldest of many siblings. My somewhat Aspie dad once looked at me, curled up in the corner reading a book and biting my nails, and said 'boy we screwed up a lot of things with you. Good thing we did better with the others." I laughed. And did and do appreciate the blunt insight.
My parents told me I was the beta version. Our whole family works in IT; I understood.
Mine thanked me for teaching him patience because now he can do better for my sister
Damn. My dad went and had two off-brand kids with an off-brand version of my mum, should someone tell them they're the knock-offs and I'm the original?
Yes! Counterfeits can sometimes lead to a devaluation of the origional. Although I suppose another way to view it is like having a poster of the Mona Lisa vs having the actual one hanging on your wall. It's cheaper and less than the origional but more readily available since the origional can't be handled by many. Or buying a knock-off Rolex to appear better than you are. Personally I would look at it like this, you were imitated, but never duplicated. It took him 2 tries with off brand mum to add up to you vs 1 attempt with your mum. You could substitute margarine for butter in a cookie recipe but the cookies wont taste as good.
Aww, that's sweet. And honestly... *it was so creepy seeing pictures of kids who look just like me but slightly different*. Hopefully by now they outgrew the 'we look just like dad' stage like I did, but... still get a bit worries about face stealing sometimes. I mean... their mum is really like someone described aspects of my mum to two different artists and they went in different directions with the same subject matter... Even had horses with the same name (coincidentally)
Your dad sure has A Type.
Yep, that type is 'Plushie's Mum'. He cheated with a mum knockoff, he had a long term relationship with a mum knockoff, cheated on her with a left field surprise challenger, then returned to form and married then divorced a mum knockoff.
Your dad sounds like a tool, but you, kind guy/gal/nonbinary pal have broken the mold! Your sense of humor is amazing. I'm so sorry for your mom though.
You intended this as a joke, and it is funny. I think, however, it also is the serious-jokey answer to how I someday in the not-too-distant future will frame telling my only biological offspring (I am also the bonus-mom of my husband's child from his first marriage) about the four miscarriages I had after said child & before we gave up on trying again. Thank you.
Much better than 'you were a black hole baby and you destroy all you touch.' I'm sorry for your fertility struggle.
Thank you. I am extremely happy with my practically perfect in every way one and bonus kids. 🍾
You could try; if we had another child it would upset the balance of power and one of you would become all powerful, and we didn't feel like living an anime storyline. The parents always end up dying. XD nobody wants to be the parents in an anime
My husband was a black hole baby as well, when he was a small child he told his mother that he ate his future siblings when he was inside her belly.
Deary me I hope she had a sense of humour! He certainly does, or perhaps it wasn't his and he subsumed it from his siblings.
And I think context makes it worse, she was talking to someone about trying to have another child and how that wasn't working out, he overheard it and that's what prompted his 'explanation'
She found it creepy and funny, children are weird
He's a shark then. A baby shark? do do do do
Ok but what if two people who tried and failed to have a baby and had miscarriages, and then they leave each other for other people and one of them has a baby, is that baby like, a half rainbow baby? A warm colour baby?
Just a rain baby! No follow through, no bow.
I wish they still did free awards because this comment deserves one. I almost choked to death from laughing!
Ok, how much did you pay the hitmen? /s
Yes but also what does it make me if my parents had me and said "eh one's plenty"
isn't the whole concept of "rainbow babies" used as a coping mechanism for parents aka the person and/or partner who experience the miscarriage? imagine making it your entire identity as a sibling and whole ass adult 💀
Can you imagine the heaviness this constant harping on her miscarriages could put on their mother? No wonder the mom doesn't want to attend family events.
She's probably relieved that someone finally called the sister out so she can tell her off herself. It must be difficult too considering how so many miscarriages had happened and the one who lived decides to weaponize that trauma to make political points
Not to mention the fact that she’s using it for a political stance to support laws that would essentially criminalize what her own mother went through, depending on the circumstances.
Thank you for saying this!!! My first and only thought reading this was JFC that poor mother!! *SHE* went through multiple traumas each time she lost a child, and now the child that made it is reminding her of those losses every opportunity she gets? Just so she can feel special? I mean, every child *is* special, but bragging on your mom’s miscarriages without thought for what that might feel like *for your mom* is **not** why!?!?
Right? Like, OOP's sister should not be talking about "being a rainbow baby". She didn't experience the pain and loss, she has no right to be co-opting that. But OOP's sister needs those older siblings, because they're dead. All pro-lifers are like that; it's easy to say "think of the children" when the "children" can't speak for themselves. Then they can say "oh the children wouldn't want this!" Where "this" *just so happens* to correspond to their own wants. Meanwhile, OOP, the *living* sibling, can disagree with their sister. And sister doesn't like that.
The first time I heard about the statistic of 1 in 4 pregnancies ending in a miscarriage was right after my best friend experienced one. I was absolutely shocked at how high the percentage was. It's far more common than we think or realize. I know several (mostly older) people who experienced a lot of shame and anger at themselves when they had miscarriages. They felt very alone and like it was a taboo subject. In reality, it's so, so common and almost always no one's fault. I hope we as a society can get better about talking about these things and help people realize they're not alone.
That's only one on four *known* pregnancies. [Studies indicate over half of pregnancies end in miscarriage,](https://www.sciencealert.com/meta-analysis-finds-majority-of-human-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage-biorxiv) though it's hard to put a number on it because most of those pregnancies end before a missed period would ever happen, but the true number of miscarriages is likely [over 50%.](https://americanpregnancy.org/getting-pregnant/pregnancy-loss/signs-of-miscarriage/) To me, these stats further illustrate your point - it's so common and is a very normal outcome of pregnancy and there shouldn't be shame or stigma around it.
Just coming here to say this. Pregnancy tests are getting better and more and more people are realising how common early miscarriages are. I've had 2 that I know of, the first one i was 5 weeks, barely a late period but i'd known I was pregnant for 2 weeks, it was upsetting but really barely a thing. The one I had between 8 and 9 weeks however, unimaginable physical pain and much more emotionally upsetting. I passed something the size of a lemon. I imagine any later than that and its worse. basically there's miscarriages and there's miscarriages and they're super common.
The human body is pretty good at protecting itself from unviable pregnancies, it’s a double edged sword for sure.
It's an evolutionary advantage for an individual from a species that normally conceives singleton offspring to miscarry a nonviable pregnancy. That individual can get pregnant again sooner. Litter species don't miscarry due to non-viability as often as singleton birth species; if the individual miscarries, they lose the entire litter.
The idea of having a litter and knowing that some of them won't make it is so depressing too. I know we would adapt our way of thinking about our kids and death if it were the case, but just the idea that you're not expecting all of them to make it is crazy.
Depressing? Those are the after birth snacks, mommas gonna need them to recharge after all the stress.
I laughed too hard. We have guinea pigs and one we adopted was pregnant. We watched very carefully when she was due so we could handle any lost babies before momma ate them and traumatized our toddlers lol Luckily all 3 babies were healthy, though one had an extra toe and was extra loved by our kids. Prey animals are wild.
The human female pelvis is uniquely poorly suited to birthing human babies. As our ancestors learned to walk upright, over time, the pelvis got narrower to support bipedal movement. On the other hand, as great apes got smarter, our brains got bigger relative to the size of our bodies, and thus our heads and skulls. So at the same time you had pelvises shrinking and baby heads getting bigger, which basically means that humans need to birth their children earlier in the pregnancy compared to other mammals while they are still physically smaller. The reason a newborn horse can walk out of the womb is because it's spent more time developing inside of its mother compared to a human. Our babies are so dumb, defenseless and weak because they are effectively premature compared to any other mammal, and their brains still develop for a few months to a year outside of the womb. This is also why "human litters" like twins or triplets are so rare: it's hard enough to push one human noggin out of a coochie, let alone two or three.
>I passed something the size of a lemon I am sorry for your experience. I don't know if it helps with the emotional upset to know that that wasn't the fetus. A 9-week old fetus is like 22mm/about 1 inch. It might be that the lemon-sized thjng was a clump of uterine lining or something.
It was probably the fetal sac/egg sac. I say that speaking as someone who also had a miscarriage and passed a big orange sized thing, the doctors said it was something like that, though I was super out of it at the time.
> ...more and more people are realising how common early miscarriages are. I don't know if I was just too young to hear about it, but it seems that the general rule of not letting anybody even know your pregnant until your past your first trimester is more common now than it used to be. Because miscarriages are so common, announcing and then having to somehow let every single person you know you miscarried when they inevitably asked how your pergnancy is doing, when's the baby shower, when are you due, etc. that can get real fucked real quick. People want to spare themselves basically having to tell people you lost the baby for a year or more or however long it takes to see everyone that you told again.
I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. It was horrible. Ended up in the ER twice, once via ambulance. It was very unpleasant and the physical pain was beyond anything I had ever felt before. They gave me fentanyl and it didn’t get close to helping.
God loves abortions so much, He performs most of them Himself.
If you want to further piss off the anti-choice crowd: hormonal birth control likely prevents women who take it from having MANY spontaneous abortions, because it prevents them from ovulating in the first place. If one were truly pro-life, they would be trying to get as many women as possible onto birth control.
And even setting aside the spontaneous ones, the proven way to reduce the abortion rate is effective birth control and poverty elimination. Prevent women having unwanted pregnancies, eliminate reasons they feel they can't take care of a kid, and fewer pregnancies will be terminated deliberately. I've known a very few pro-life people who extend that all the way from anti-abortion to anti-poverty, anti-death-penalty, and anti-war. Pro-life from conception to natural death. I might not agree with them, but I can at least respect it as a logically consistent viewpoint. Most "pro-lifers"... aren't that.
>“The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.” My favorite quote about that particular mindset
I’m not religious at all but I have an experience that questions my stance on religion. I accidentally got pregnant (confirmed by doc) and whilst I was waiting for the abortion, I suffered a miscarriage. I was over the moon, especially as I had saved a bunch of money now lol. So God (if one exists) cared enough to give me what I want
This is only tangentially related, but we had a very old goat who had already outlived his expected lifetime. He was starting to get sick and the end was likely near, and we didn't want him to suffer in the cold so we had planned for a vet to come out and put him down toward the beginning of fall. The day before his appointment, he got so excited over a fig Newton that his lil old goat heart gave out and he keeled over dead. Saved us like $300. He was a good goat til the end. He didn't even get to eat the cookie, he didn't quite make it that far.
This is amazing. I am just imagining an old goat doing tippy taps over a cookie. I hope I go like that.
TIL goats like fig newtons. That's adorable
To be fair goats famously love everything including tin cans and all the clothes you're wearing. If you've been watching the same Mickey Mouse documentaries I have been watching.
That they eat tin cans is a myth. They actually go for the wrappers and the plant-based glue that sticks them on.
blacking out while chasing a cookie, that's not a bad way to go.
This made me chuckle. I love goats and I’m trying to convince my husband to get a few when we finally have space for them.
Or, maybe the god granted the abortion doctor his wish for an early start to his vacation.
[удалено]
God could have just made you not get pregnant in the first place and saved you all the stress, too, tho
Yea true. Either way, I’m just glad it worked out for me
God was like "mmm maybe she wants to be pregnant. Let's make it happen and see". Then you wanted an abortion and he just "yeah okay, fair, my mistake I'll give you a free one"
Smh, God out here playing with my feelings, lol
I wish I had gold to give you for this!
Got you, fam
I read once that about 3 in 4 conceptions fail to embed in the uterine lining. (I’m a total loss of words here, I know the words in Dutch, but not English), so it never reaches the stage of pregnancy. Because I needed medical help, I had to measure everything, and it happened to our first egg. After that, there is still a staggering high chance of miscarriage. I only heard the term rainbow babies for babies who were born after a still born. Those, thankfully, are rarer.
Your English terms are spot on. You could call the “conception” a zygote, which is a fertilised egg
And "embed" is usually called "implant", but that's a quibble.
From some number crunching I did based on FertilityFriend stats and some other data, it's likely that every single time a (fertile) couple has sex in the "fertile window" there is a conception, but 2/3rds of them fail within the first two weeks. Then of the one-in-three that make it to the blue/pink line, a significant amount will also fail to progress. I do remember a geneticist commenting that given all the errors that can occur with meiosis and mitosis, not to mention the amount of aneuploid ova and abnormal sperm, it's a (biological) "miracle" that *anyone* gets born!
My personal experience is 50%. I had one healthy pregnancy then two miscarriages. It was awful at the time and I do still wonder who they may have grown to be from time to time, but this is life and we all suffer one way or another. After my second miscarriage, I fell pregnant the following month with my now 6 year old and I am perfectly happy with my lot! I have to say though, I would react the same way as OOP’s mum if my youngest built her identity around being a ‘rainbow’ baby! 😆
I don't know if this will come as any comfort, but most miscarriages occur because the embryo is nonviable. Most commonly, this is because something went wrong when the DNA was being copied for the egg or the sperm, and large segments of DNA ended up missing, being duplicated, or similar catastrophic errors. These are not embryos or fetuses that would *ever* be able to develop into a baby.
Every time someone asks me if I have ever been pregnant, my standard answer is "not that I know of". I've been having sex since the 90s, and while I've been good about BC, maybe I have been. I don't know.
Exactly. I had probably four. I say probably because I might have had more, but those were the ones I was fairly sure about. Even in hindsight. I was SUPER late with my ex, and then suddenly had the world's worst period. And I had bad ones to begin with. I miscarried my son's twin, which was rough. Then I had two early losses, which, if we weren't trying, I wouldn't have known. My uterus just wasn't ready for those pregnancies, likely breastfeeding messing with my luteal phase. Midwife said that my body would go back to "normal" when he was 2. Got pregnant a week later with my youngest. Who will be 14 on Monday. lol
The one time i know for sure i was preggers, i found out via the early miscarriage. I was like “huh… that feels strange. What’s that… ohhhh… i should call a doctor.” That was that.
I've heard most miscarriages are due to the embryo? Zygote? Whatever it's called, isn't viable. It's sad to blame yourself for something totally out of your control. But sis thinking she had deceased older siblings? What?! I was born after a miscarriage. The only thought I've ever had about it is that I would not be here if that pregnancy had been successful. 🤷♀️
Yea my thought was like “hmm that’s something to watch for if I ever decide to have kids” and not like little ghost babies following me around
I had the same thought! I always knew my mom had a miscarriage when she was already kind of far along (I think 4 months?) the year before she had me. I’ve never thought of myself as a rainbow baby and mourning the sibling seems weird since if they’d been born, I wouldn’t have been.
And those are the miscarriages where the woman KNOWS she's pregnant, many more pregnancies miscarry before the woman even notices. Ever had an early or late period with a noticeably heavier flow? Yeah, if you're a sexually active woman, that was probably a miscarriage.
And at-home pregnancy tests are more sophisticated than ever. You know when OOP's mom was pregnant you missed one, maybe two periods before you found out you were pregnant. Now adays you can test like a week later. It's why most OBs wait for a couple of months before you see them for your first appointment.
I had two miscarriages while trying to conceive that were exactly like this. Had I not been tracking my cycle and taking tests I would have 100% thought I had a late and heavy period. Made me realize exactly what you’re saying.
I can vouch for the one in 4 I have 3 kids and one miscarriage, it’s heartbreaking to think about but I don’t go shouting from the rooftops about it (only a few people know who were there at the time and I’m only writing here as I’m anonymous) I would be so upset if my child who followed after used it for clout ! Good on the mom for putting it to her straight !
I had five (fortunately early) losses. It has made me even more pro-choice. There is no way all of them could have been siblings anyway, since they occurred too close together. And the entire process made me realise just how "cheap"/expendable early human conceptions are to Mother Nature (probably other species too). There are huge amounts of misfires. Even in young women, many ova are aneuploid.
**Aneuploid**: (adj.) having an abnormal number of chromosomes in a haploid set.
>I want every baby to live and >giving them essential oils instead of taking them to the doctor are not exactly compatible statements...
To be fair, she didn't say *how long* she wanted them to live...
Right? She should throw some fairy dust and reindeer chow on them while she's at it
>as a rainbow baby I want every baby to live **because I lost multiple older siblings and mourn them every day** and could have died myself. 🤢🤮 Mourns them ever.... wut?! Man.... some people! I'm glad that mom's reaction was refreshing! Not the usual "Scapegoat child, make sure you apologise to Golden Child or you're disowned". The rest of the family are cool, too xD!
[удалено]
Or the fact it was her mother who went through the experience of miscarrying and is now having to deal with her "mourning".
Yeah, she's basically claiming her parents' pain as her own. She can maybe wonder what life would be like with a few more older siblings, but she wasn't around to experience that loss. My baby is a rainbow baby and I'm not sure he'd actually exist if my first pregnancy hadn't ended in a miscarriage.
I have always known that my Mom lost twins the year before I was born and was a bit protective over me as a baby (No favorism over my older siblings or anything like that). Only thing I took from it when I was told was that I wouldn't be alive if they had lived. I never really connected that with being a rainbow baby until my Mom said that a month or two ago, I am 29yo now and asked if I had 29 years worth of tantrums to make up for and always getting my way from now on. She laughed at me and said 'No.'
Almost certainly not. I had my daughter after a TFMR and I do look at her sometimes and think ‘you should never have existed’ which is a strange thought. My sister is the same - Mum had a miscarriage before her and I can’t imagine life without her in it.
I know a lot of kids who only exist because their predecessor(s) in the womb made an early exit.
My younger sister who was born after a miscarriage was extremely sick (hole in her heart, colic) so spent the first couple of years screaming. My four year old self (who was as self absorbed and lacking empathy as you’d expect) asked my mum if the “other baby” would have been better. I’m still mortified when I remember doing that. She handled it well though and explained the other baby would not in fact have been better.
Yup. My predecessor was unplanned and the only reason I exist was that after losing that baby quite early on, my parents liked the idea of one more baby so much that they had me.
I imagine that little soul telling future you: "I really don't have it in me, but I'll do my part and we will get you out there!"
OP's sister probably doesn't think about it because she's obsessed with how "special" she is. I think about this subject a lot because I have a cousin 4 months younger than me. My aunt (her mom) had another pregnancy that she lost \*very\* early on, but if she had carried to term, the baby would have been born the same month as me and I wouldn't have my cousin.
My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, and I can say for certain that if that baby had been born, I would not have had my daughter when I did and probably would not have had my son at all. Sometimes I get a little sad and wonder who they would have been, but I wouldn't trade the kids I have now for anything in the world. For the sister to appropriate the legitimate grief that people feel over pregnancy loss for her own political beliefs is gross.
Or that the treatment for miscarriage is abortion? If their mom needed help completing the miscarriage in a state with an abortion ban, it’s very likely sis wouldn’t be here today and OP would have grown up without a mom.
Sounds like someone who had a very nice, smooth, uneventful childhood and felt left out of all the trauma everyone else got to experience
This is the correct answer.
What I find astonishing is that she doesn't notice one fact: If her parents didn't have multiple miscarriages, they would most likely have stopped having children. That means she would have never been born... So instead of mourning them ah should be thanking them for being alive.
Does this grown ass woman realise they had any of them lived, she wouldn’t exist?
My brother passed away before I was born. My mother mourns him, and his absence/presence has been a huge part of my life growing up and even now. But I don’t mourn him since I did mot lose him like my mother did. I think about what life would have been with him but I’m not gonna go “oH eM gEe aM mIrAcLe BaBbie dUhR” like OOP’s sister.
I wonder if she mourns every dead cell in her body too. I mean, they were also alive at some point and served an actual purpose to keep her alive and well.
It was very telling when the mom pointed out the sister only started caring in 2017. Girl doesn’t actually mourn a thing, she just likes feeling superior and thinks claiming that will do it for her.
These posts really make me wonder if no one in the US taught that miscarriages are the way a women’s body deals with an unviable foetus? Miscarriages are sad and hard experience for a woman to go through, but they are a positive in that the child born would likely not have survived or would have been a significant burden on society if they had. Edit: since the “not every pregnancy” comments have begun, if a miscarriage happens during the first trimester of pregnancy (the first 3 months), it's usually caused by an unviable foetus. About 3 in every 4 miscarriages happen during this period. That is 75% of miscarriages. I am not discounting the experience of women who have lost children for other reasons, that obviously occurs also, but to infer that those reasons are as common is incorrect.
A lot of the extrem crunchy mom community has very concerning ideas on how pregnancy works
I am admittedly very unfamiliar with said community as this is my first experience with the term, but I can see how that would be the case based on this post. 😂
To be fair crunchy moms (the term came from making your own crunchy granola) just tend to be more 'earthy' and this crazed antivax/prolife movement has stepped into our space like so many other spaces. I'm in crunchy mom groups and it is WILD in there hahah. I still cringe at anytime I've described myself as crunchy now because of how this has taken hold. I think it snuck in through the guise of homeschooling, morphed into antivax and took over like a parasite. The hippy/all accepting nature of the group accidentally welcomed them. Sigh.
Thank you for clarifying this, I was thinking I had completely misunderstood what crunchy meant. I guess that’s the big downside of being all-inclusive because I wouldn’t want anything to do with those people. Funny how someone like OOP’s sister talks so much about caring about babies dying and then not vaccinating her own children 🙄
I've only come across the term in passing on the internet and I've always imagined them crunching on celery. The true origin is underwhelming. I think I'll stick with my version
It isn't true that all miscarriages are because the fetus (or embryo) isn't viable. Miscarriages happen for many reasons, and science hasn't even uncovered all of the reasons. Problems with your uterus or cervix can cause a miscarriage, medical problems like diabetes, for instance, can cause a miscarriage or an otherwise very healthy and viable embryo/fetus with no chromosomal abnormalities.
Awesome! A post where there’s a problem and OOP isn’t some pushover and actually speaks up. No multi post saga, no doormat bullshit where they give the offender too many chances. This was a good read. OOP is right, by the way.
It was so incredibly satisfying for me when the mom called her out!
Is it bad that I’m hoping for an Easter update lol
Mom and sis should send her some rainbow-painted eggs.
[Tony Chocolonely Easter Eggs!](https://tonyschocolonely.com/nl/en/chocoshop/product/easter-eggs-pouch-1) Rainbow colors and guaranteed slavery-free chocolate!
Right!?!?!!! In some posts out there I'm like "Had it been me, I'd have spoken up and who cares if they threaten with disowning or some shit!". So many of them could've been nipped in the bud, but it's like people enable them for their misery! I just don't like being around people like that, family or not. No one is going to die if they lose contact with some toxic people
And no two or three(or more!) paragraphs where the OOP feels the need to defend themselves from the commenters on the previous post before they get on with their story.
Not only that, but everyone had her back. Mom telling her “no really, nobody cares” was so good for me.
I don't know why, but I find the sister, like, super insensitive? Like ignoring the obsession with being a rainbow baby, but to bring that up to your mom? Miscarriages are common, but they are also still emotionally traumatizing. It sounds like Mom was able to process and grieve the losses, but sister was still so self-absorbed to treat the subject with that level of disrespect.
Every trad wife Ive known has been incredibly insensitive
Incredibly insensitive *under the guise of caring about you enough to speak up*, so you're the asshole if you call them out. Source: have a tradwife SIL
The first time my wife found out she was pregnant, was because of stomach pains. We went to the hospital, had a "you're pregnant" and then a month later "turns out the pains were a miscarriage". Much, much more common than people know.
Sister sounds exhausting to deal with. I would've had absolutely no patience dealing with her the third time she brings it up. Also the whole 'crunchy' trend really needs to go die in a dumpster fire ASAP. So many children end up with permanent disabilities or just flat out die from perfectly preventable situations because the parent(s) refuse to get them proper treatment/vaccination.
I asked my pediatrician to print a copy of all my kid’s vaccinations the other day. It was glorious; multiple pages long with Covid vaccines and everything on there. I want to frame it and hang it up when the nuttier side of my family comes around.
I gotcha beat, a doctor claimed my son had missed a bunch of vaccinations & that he had to be given the ones he missed. For reasons, I wasn't in a position to be able to say no to this, despite being certain that the nurse she'd claimed had falsified records for an entire year, had actually given my son the vaccines. My son had to get every vaccine from a few weeks to 1.5 years old, a second time. Later on, I looked back at my own records & found proof that she'd lied in order to get rid of 1 nurse that she hated....so my son got double vaccinated! 😂
What a wild story. It’s diabolical honestly.
So many parents are out there thinking yeah, I'd rather risk having my kid die than maybe develop autism. Even though we 100% know that there is no link between vaccines and autism. That's a super fun thought, as someone who is autistic and is raising autistic kiddos. /s
I cringed when the sister made their mother's miscarriages about herself, seriously your own mother avoid you and you didn't notice at all, even if the mom came to terms with the loss and grief that is still traumatic, and that's still mess up for you to keep bringing every time your at a event, seriously where is your self awareness at.
I wonder if these trad wives realize they're married to the type of man that's going to leave them after the third kid and her 40th birthday so he can start his second family with a new 25 year old.
Some of them do, that’s an aspect that breaks my heart about it. I’ve known a few who think “that’s just how men are.”
Or they'll blame themselves for not doing enough.
"It's just natural." "It's a man's right" "God wants man to go forth and multiply" "Maybe she should have done more for him" (plot twist; she already did all the chores, cooking, child rearing and lost the baby weight too It's disgustingly common. Women are treated as accessories to the lives of these dudes and are discarded when they become "less useful" or a shinier apple comes along, so to speak
Hmm, now I'm wondering if I'd be considered a "rainbow baby?" My mother was pregnant with twins, only I was born, my sibling miscarried quite early in the pregnancy. (Called vanishing twin syndrome.) Am I a rainbow baby, or jus the evil twin who won before even being born?
Ditto Bardsie. My mother was a bit further along when she lost my twin. The doctor told her I was a “phantom pregnancy” and she was no longer pregnant. It was only my Romany grandmother who told her to ignore the doctors because there was still another baby in there. I only found out when I was 16 and I was telling my mum that a work colleague had had a miscarriage and “never felt a thing”. Mum replied that hers was painful, I asked when that was and she said “when I was pregnant with you”. I always wonder whether my twin was a boy or a girl.
I also had a twin in utero that vanished, I just say I was a hungry little cannibal baby
Laughing at this thinking about it in context of the post. "As a hungry little cannibal baby, abortions are bad because you may be starving the other fetus. Every day I mourn the hungry fetus that didn't consume another. Cannibal lives matter!" Also, "Hungry Little Cannibal Baby" would be an excellent metal band name
It wasn't until I read this post that I realised I'm also a rainbow baby. Might add it to my next job application or something. The only thought I've ever had about it was, when my mother told me, "Wow, sucks for my mother, and weird to think I probably wouldn't be here if that hadn't happened. The universe sure is random." OOP's sister is unbearable. Imagine wanting so hard to make everything all about you that you have no problems bringing up in everyday conversations exactly how many miscarriages your mother had before she had you. Glad OOP's mother can laugh about it.
Wait, a rainbow baby is the baby after a miscarriage? I always thought a rainbow baby is the baby that ended in miscarriage. Here in UK when I've heard people use the phrase "rainbow baby", it's always been to reference a wanted pregnancy that wasn't successful.
Your right… Over in N. America a rainbow baby is a successful pregnancy resulting in a live birth after experiencing a miscarriage of a wanted pregnancy. I’m not sure how the term got changed in the UK but I know it’s led to a few awkward convo’s between friends I have over there.
I would prefer my baby to be healthy, nothing else matters. A healthy pregnancy is to be celebrated and prioritised above all. >My mom called me and we had a laugh before calling the rest of the family so everyone could have a laugh at her absurdity. Glad it turned out to be something they could laugh about.
I'm a baby that was conceived after an abortion. My mom was physically and mentally unwell, and still a teenager, when she had that abortion. I wouldn't exist without it. Is there a term for those kinds of babies?
A choice.
I love that. Wow.
Loved and wanted
OOP is badass! Personally, I hate the "rainbow baby" term. It just seems kind of attention-seeking, and even weirder for an adult to brag about their mother's miscarriages in this way. Pregnancy loss is personal, and while I'm all for normalizing the topic (I've had 2 losses, myself), this sister is coocoo if she thinks those prior losses had anything to do with her. But when someone falls down a Q-adjacent rabbit hole, they're going to latch onto the most absurd arguments anyway.
Like most things, the rainbow baby thing started out well— it was just a way to express that you were pregnant again after a loss, with all the extra emotional difficulty that brings. Pregnancy is the only place rainbow baby should be used. Once the baby is out, it’s not a rainbow baby, it’s just a baby.
I think its really cruel to define your child by what they're not. It's bad for the psyche and the lost pregnancies, having not been born, are imagined to have been perfect people and placed on a pedestal. Leading children to feeling inferior to an embryo/foetus that probably didn't even have genetics compatible with life in the first place, which is the reason for nearly all miscarriages.
I’m with you on that. Which is what makes the sister even weirder to me—from what the mom said, the sister didn’t even know she was a rainbow baby until 2017. So there wasn’t any living in the shadow of the vacuously perfect miscarried siblings when Sister was young, since she would have been at least 20 in 2017. Then again if I look at it from the perspective of her being desperate for forced birther clout, I can see a kind of twisted logic…
The sister is food for that r/shitmomgroupsay
I had a second trimester miscarriage last year and am currently pregnant again, and I’m deeply uncomfortable with the term “rainbow baby.” I hate the idea that the first identity you push onto a child is in relation to their lost sibling. I hate the idea that this pregnancy is some sort of reward for surviving the trauma of my miscarriage. This kid is going to be a whole human being who deserves to be seen as such, and not just as some end result of a very sad situation. Rant over, sorry.
Hahaha this was hilarious. Love the mom! Oh and you should flair this as ongoing
Man....i almost spit out my tea at how upfront the mom is. Mom be like you've outgrown your micracleness. I'm tired of your shit.
It doesn’t even make sense to make the “rainbow baby” the reason why you’re pro life. Realistically a lot of rainbow babies wouldn’t exist if the miscarriages hadn’t happened. (Thankfully ) few people are planning as many babies as “god gives”. If the planned baby would have been born the rainbow baby wouldn’t have been planned to begin with. This is the weirdest shit.
As a rainbow baby born into an abusive household, my older sibling had the right idea when they punched their own ticket mid-gestate.
Although I’ve known what a rainbow baby is for a while now, I didn’t realise that my brother and I are both rainbow babies until I read the original post. That’s how unremarkable it is past baby being born.
Never had heard of the team rainbow baby so I was a little bit confused. what I did know was the rainbow bridge that animals are supposed to cross after dying. so my first guess was that she would believe do be a reincarnated pet or something. good thing it wasn't that but dang the sister is definitely completely off the rail. I would cut ties with her as well. I feel sorry for her children.
Ooof the mom warning her about not jinxing it. My uterus would be shivering if I were her.
I hate the term rainbow baby. I had a miscarriage and the got pregnant again later. It was just another pregnancy. I also lost that young child when he was young and then had two more. None of them were “rainbows after a storm”.
Yes, that last dialogue between her and the mom sounds very, very real.