by Sara McGinnis posted in Parenting

I recently reconnected with a high school friend, who I found out has a 5-year-old daughter and a 1-year-old "rainbow baby" son. "How wonderful!" I said, "A sunshine and a rainbow!
She smiled politely, but was clearly confused.
"Have you heard about sunshine babies"" I asked. Even I hadn't heard the term until just recently, but now that I'm in the know I see it being used all over the place.
As you may have already heard, a rainbow baby is a baby that is born following a miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, or infant loss. We've been thrilled to share dozens of posts about these glorious arrivals.
A sunshine baby, however, is a child carried and born prior to loss. For my friend, that means her eldest is the sunshine. Sadly, she and her husband lost their second daughter during labor and delivery. The experience felt like a dark storm to go through. A few years later their son, a rainbow, arrived.

Now I'm not aware if the weather-related names continue on further (aside from baby "showers" and "snowflake" embryo adoption, perhaps), but I do know the idea of her eldest being a sunshine put a big, bittersweet grin on my old friend's face.
Somehow, it wasn't until a few days after our chat the song "You Are My Sunshine" popped into my mind. With the idea of a parent going through a loss while treasuring their elder child fresh in my thoughts, I heard the chorus i...