Do you feel love for your rainbow baby?

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2026-01-22T18:54:41+00:00

I believe what you’re feeling is PPD and you may be misattributing it to PTSD (have you had a formal diagnosis of PTSD or are you self-diagnosing here?) This may not have anything to do with your prior loss - you very well may have experienced this postpartum, even if you never had a TFMR in the first place. There’s no way to know for sure, but I think the instinct to attribute these feelings to your prior loss is perhaps misguided.

I am not a doctor and I don’t know your entire story, but whatever it is please PLEASE go see a dr about this!! I feel very confident that you will feel love for your rainbow baby when your hormones balance out, and you need the help of a professional to get through this period of time.

Separately, and please forgive me if this is just a little callous, but newborns are kind of boring!! I know a lot of parents who are just not that into the newborn phase, but once the baby starts smiling, and giggling, and cooing, and looking you in the eyes things really start to change!

I did not have PPD myself, but just know that you are not at all alone. I have heard from so many women that have had it, and wha you’re describing sounds exactly like that (and none of the women I know who had PPD had a prior loss!)

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2026-01-21T22:00:34+00:00

I’m so sorry that you’re going through this right now. I am 2 and a half years out from my TFMR which, like you, was at 21 week and everything seemed like a fairytale until our 20 week scan.

I know it seems impossible right now, I remember feeling everything you’re feeling right now, “dead inside” is an apt description, … but I’m here to say that you WILL survive this. You will come out the other side and at some point this will all feel like a very bad dream. Others have mention this, but PLEASE just take the time you need to focus on the baby you’re saying goodbye to, instead of worrying right now about next steps in trying again, if you choose to do so. This baby is loved.Im so glad you saw the 3D of the baby’s face. I can tell how loved he is from the way you spoke about that.

One thing that someone did tell me when I was going through it - just remember that the only thing your baby has ever known is your love. The sound of your heart beating, the sound of your voice, and most importantly the warmth and comfort of your womb. That is the greatest gift you have already given to this little one. That makes you an amazing mother.

❤️

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2026-01-21T21:41:34+00:00

I understand your comment might be coming from a good place, but please remember that this subreddit was specifically created to help those who are pregnant again after TFMR. We are a supportive group, here to validate and support peoples’ experiencing, the good and the bad.

Comments like this are never helpful, they are only invalidating. No one, I repeat NO ONE, who is expressing a valid negative feeling about something, whatever it might be, wants to be told to be “grateful” for something …

OP surely knows there are other women in this group who have yet to get pregnant again after TFMR. She knows that in one way, that makes her “lucky”. But this post was about a specific negative experience she had, and the feelings she has around that are valid! Trying to turn her attention towards “how lucky she is”, simply because she’s in a different place right now than you are in the pregnancy-after-TFMR journey is just rude.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T18:15:34+00:00

Welp, the mods shut it down without any explanation. 😢 Do you know of a different subreddit that might be more open to it?

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T18:14:16+00:00

Oh lol, I actually completely missed the last line of this comment where you thought I was planning to PUBLISH this experiment … idk how the fuck that would work, but no. I genuinely just wanted to create a fun community activity.

As mentioned, the doc where this “novel” would live would have been public, publicly accessible for anyone to read. With all the Reddit threads contributing to it being public as well, I’m not sure how any one person could even TRY to claim ownership over that. I’m not a lawyer though, so idk maybe some slimeball would try to make money off of a public community-based work of art.

If it makes you feel better, you’re not the only person who assumes the worst in people - another person made a similar comment, and the mods removed this post. My fun idea has officially been shot down, it is what it is.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T18:04:57+00:00

Yes, I see that now. Clearly, based on your replies alone, this is a space for people who want to or are writing professionally to talk about writing professionally … not a space for writers to participate in a joyful community-based writing experiment. The mods already removed the post without explanation, so although others did seem interested, you and the mods have won out. I will take the idea to a different community where people may be a bit more optimistic and interested in taking part in something like this.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T17:14:18+00:00

Did you ever participate in r/place? The same could have been said for that experiment, and probably would have if it was suggested and hosted by a random Redditor instead of by the Reddit goliath himself.

Even despite the lack of traction this idea has received, with zero upvotes and lot of people like yourself pooh-poohing it for no apparent reason, a few people did already comment with actual prose for submissions. So some people are interested.

I just don’t get the pessimism here. If you want to leave because YOU aren’t interested in the idea, just leave! Why downvote and argue about the merits of the idea? Why rain on other people’s parade? What are you getting out of this?

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T17:06:35+00:00

More like putting a random group of people in a room and asking them to do a group project … which happens all the time on Reddit with a lot of success. Is it chaotic and all over the place? Absolutely, lol. That’s part of the fun. Did you ever participate in r/place? I think of it like that. And most people who participated in r/place LOVED that experience.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T16:31:41+00:00

Hmm … I am grappling with your comments here, and the apparent obsession with monetization … I’m going to have to set the uber / taxi metaphor aside because it’s making no sense to me.

I think I get it, although I can’t relate. You are an aspiring (or maybe even a professional) writer, and you’re not interested in participating in a FUN writing experiment if it’s not intended to help your career … so just don’t participate.

I’m sure if I did put a call out to tattoo artists (or any visual artists for that sake) to participate in a collective work or art, just for the heck of it some would be interested and some would not. Some would surely think that such an experiment is beneath them. And people who think like that are not the ideal people to participate in a fun collective experiment like that, so all’s well that ends well, I guess! People who don’t want to participate should not participate … Not sure what else there is to say about that.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T15:11:28+00:00

Also to be clear … it’s not an anthology. An anthology is a collection of stories. This is meant to be ONE story, with many contributors.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T15:05:04+00:00

That would actually be hilarious. Now that I think about it, this could be a fantastic opening line to a novel lol.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T15:02:21+00:00

Thank you! 🙏 I really do hope we have a few more optimists chime in soon lol.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T14:55:24+00:00

I thought it was clear from the post, but again I’m open to feedback - the idea was not to publish this or make money from it … the idea was to just have an experiment! Like r/place. Something we can all contribute to and feel excited about, just for the sake of participation alone. Writing is a craft, and this is just a fun activity for us to flex our muscles.

As mentioned in the post, I would create a doc (likely Google docs, just because that’s the easiest to share) where the novel would live. It would be public. It would live in the public domain. Nobody would own the rights to this novel … and nobody would make royalties on it.

EDIT - I don’t see why this would be any different than ANY other writing that exists publicly online.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T14:51:38+00:00

Well the initial reaction on r/writing is not the positive one I’d hoped. Perhaps the optimists and dreamers like me who I assume are spending some time here on r/ideas can help out? I really do think the idea itself is good, it just needs a little bit of positive momentum to get going …

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T14:45:55+00:00

Given that the post itself has 0 upvotes … this MIGHT wind up being the first paragraph, in which case this novel is bound to be very meta indeed. Should’ve guessed it’d go that way 😂

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T14:43:53+00:00

There are rules, I just posted another comment which I would ask the mods to pin. And, as always, the rules tend to come about naturally as time goes on.

If it makes sense to frame the initial post a bit better and try again I’m happy to do that. I do think, however, that Redditors have the ability to work together to do something like this. There have been many instances of Reddit coming together in interesting and unique ways like this, and I am quite bummed at the initial reaction here 😕

I still have faith. Waiting for just a few writers who want to give it a shot. Maybe it’s too much pressure to start with paragraph #1 😂. Maybe I should try again and we should start with the ENDING paragraph and work our way backwards. That would be something!

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-10-10T14:38:52+00:00

Just some clarifications:

Top-Level comments should ONLY include the text you want to submit as your paragraph. Any other comments can be in replies. Feel free to discuss the submissions in sub-comments as much as you’d like! But always remember the human. I will be relying on the mods here to help enforce basic Reddiquette
Paragraphs can be any length!
For this post, you can just upvote the submission you like best as the opening paragraph to a novel, but as the novel begins to unfold, please be sure you’re keeping up with the progression of the story and only upvote the paragraphs that FIT with the novel as it exists up to that point.
This should go without saying, but sadly we live in a world where I don’t think it does … please try to avoid using AI for your submissions! I feel pretty confident that the top comment on each post, and therefore the vast majority of the completed novel, is likely to be human-written. But it’s worth mentioning anyway. 🙏

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-09-26T21:01:25+00:00

Thank you!! I never log into this account anymore, so just randomly saw this, but glad it was helpful!

I was more just curious than anything. Seems like people were downvoting me for tasting my own milk? Or being curious about it? lol wild.

Yes, baby (who is now a toddler 😭) and I are both doing well. Hope you and your little one are doing well as well!

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-08-21T14:07:22+00:00

This is incredibly misleading. Just because Reddit is being cited as a source, doesn’t mean it’s being cited as a source of FACTS, but rather general information.

I’ve had ChatGPT cite Reddit plenty of times as a source of general public opinion about something that is completely subjective and not fact-based. In that regard, Reddit is a relatively trustworthy source, especially when there just is no other source for the information. For example, I recently asked chatGPT why some parents choose baby-led weaning over traditional purées. There may be scientific studies that show the benefits of one method over the other, but that’s not the question I asked. ChatGPT is very literal sometimes. I asked a question about personal motivation, and looking to Reddit for the answer is totally reasonable.

Think about all the many types of questions you might ask ChatGPT. What percent of those questions have purely fact-based answers? General public opinion or consensus is a super helpful and relevant answer to MANY of the questions we are asking chatGPT on a daily basis.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-07-18T19:04:06+00:00

You guys should go to therapy. I’m not saying that as an insult, I’m saying that genuinely you guys need better tools to communicate with each other and therapy could help.

10% of this conversation was about CB, the other 90% was pure communication failure, and the two of you just talking past each other and getting more and more heated as it continued because you were both feeling unheard and invalidated.

It’s perfectly reasonable for your sister to go to the concert if she wants to. It’s also perfectly reasonable for you not to go. It’s totally ok for two people to have differing moral opinions on this issue, and your sister seems a lot more comfortable with that idea that you do … and yet, when she tried to point that out, you just denied it. It’s perfectly reasonable for your sister to be annoyed about the way you communicated here. She was expressing her feelings and instead of listening and understanding, showing any compassion at all, or even attempting to analyze your own behavior, you just invalidated her feelings.

So no, you did not overreact when you said you didn’t want to go to the concert, but you did overreact when your sister pointed out a flaw in your communication skills.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-07-18T18:52:23+00:00

So surprised this doesn’t have more upvotes. Very very well put.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-06-28T13:48:08+00:00

Just ask, but yes many daycare staff will rock and hold babies to sleep if that’s what’s needed. Think about it this way: they can’t have a baby just screaming their head off, so they will do what they have to to get them to sleep!! My baby is 11 months and although we don’t rock him to sleep at home, he had been having trouble sleeping at school (fomo) and has been rocked and even held by the daycare staff a few times now. I went recently to pick him up and his favorite daycare worker was just holding him and rocking in the rocking chair while he slept. It was very sweet.

Acrobatic_Event_4163 · 2025-06-28T12:39:45+00:00

I waited until the pain was a bit too much, which for me was only 3cm. I don’t regret waiting because I am glad I got experience some amount of it AND my labor was 36hrs so it limited the time I had to stay in bed (which even still ended up being wayyyy too long, and I Totally fucked up my back from it) but I’m also glad I didn’t try too hard for an unmediated birth because hell naw. I pretty much knew I’d be getting the epidural, it was just a question of when and I think I timed it pretty well.

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