My Rainbow Baby Adelaide’s First Year Photos| Matthews, NC | Kira Jeffrey Photography

I can’t believe my little girl is already one year old. When I think of life before her existence was even known it feels like forever ago – however this past year of her life has seemed to just fly by!

Adelaide is my very own Rainbow Baby. It’s something I didn’t talk about for a long time with most for many reasons, one being it’s not an easy subject to talk about… but I wanted to share our story.

But at the end of 2017 we had decided we wanted to try to add another baby to our family. I was in no immediate rush to get pregnant just happy that we were on the path of thinking of a sibling for CJ. The first month I got off the pill, without trying, we got pregnant. I was shocked at first because I assumed we’d have a little more time, but overall so excited!

First appointment went smooth, although measuring a little earlier than we thought (measuring about 5 weeks when I thought I was about 7 weeks), but I hadn’t had a real cycle after coming off the pill so we figured things could be off. September 23rd was the due date. Positive test meant pregnancy. That’s how it went with CJ and I honestly barley thought of alternative scenarios like I did my first pregnancy. My pregnancy with CJ had been so easy and smooth, I just took it for granted. I immediately told everyone close to me. I bought CJ Big Brother books and we started reading them before bed.

Two weeks later I went back for my second checkup, again not thinking anything of it, but looking back so grateful we got CJ coverage and my husband came to the appointment with me. During the ultrasound I noticed my tech taking a little longer than usual to talk and show us photos and I started to feel something might be off. When she turned to us and told us she wasn’t seeing the right amount of growth I still didn’t really register what that meant right away… and then is started to sink in. This baby was not the same as CJ. This baby was not healthy and strong and growing like it was supposed to. Something went wrong and that tiny being was not going to grow to be a baby that would join our family.

I cried a lot. We cried a lot. We went home with the knowledge that this was not a viable pregnancy and we had a decision to be made about how to proceed. Lots of tears were shed. After discussing with my doctor, I decide to go in for a D&C a few days later. I needed to be done and to start moving on.

And it was even more painful to tell everyone that I told that I was in fact not pregnant anymore. That was some of the hardest part of it.

As sad as I was to have lost this baby, there was a very small part of me that just felt that maybe this was all happening for a reason and I felt at peace knowing we would get our baby one day…

After that I wanted to be pregnant again SO bad, but of course it didn’t happen quite as fast as the last time. Each passing month that I wasn’t pregnant I was getting more and more frustrated. But in August of 2018 I got my first positive again. And that’s when Adelaide’s story begins.

Overall my pregnancy was very smooth. I was always a little more anxious about loosing this pregnancy, but I was also so distracted by chasing after my 2 year old and trying to run my business, which helped.

On April 15, 2019 our little Adelaide made her grand debut! That is a whole other story in itself, given we were basically “homeless” my last week pregnant/first week of Adelaide’s life. (We had a leak in our house and had to pack up 80% of our house and move out of our home for almost 3 weeks.) But overall, her labor was quick and easy and there is nothing like that moment of holding your daughter in your arms for the first time.

Over the past year of her life I captured monthly photos of her (the same general way I captured monthly photos of her big brother CJ). Here’s a preview of her month to month!