One Mom's Emotional Journey To Meeting Her Rainbow Baby

Lila, now 31, was thrilled when—in December 2015—she took a pregnancy test and saw two pink lines. She and her husband, Tim, had been trying for a third baby and immediately began dreaming of who this new little person would be.

But two weeks after her positive pregnancy test, Lila started having severe pain in her shoulder blade. She called the on-call OB who told Lila to get to the hospital. An ultrasound confirmed what the doctor suspected: Lila had a tubal pregnancy, which meant that the fertilized egg had implanted in her fallopian tubes, rather than her uterus. The pain she had been feeling was because the tube had burst, and blood was filling her abdomen, which displaced her lung. Lila had emergency surgery to save her life, but there was no baby.

The loss was devastating to Lila and her husband, but they knew they wanted to grow their family, so once they had the go-ahead from Lila’s doctor, they got pregnant again. When she went into labor with her third daughter, Lila brought along Spokane, WA-based birth photographer Laura Fifield , who captured the overwhelming love and relief that overtook Lila when she met her rainbow baby.

Here, in her own words, is Lila’s account of that amazing day.

Captions have been edited and condensed for clarity.