Jamie Otis and Doug Hehner first became known as one of the three couples in the first season of "Married at First Sight" in 2014. They talked about having a baby when they were on the show. Two years later, Jamie got pregnant and the couple was so happy. When the 31-year-old reality star was four months pregnant, she and Doug were heartbroken when she miscarried a little boy they had already named Jonathan Edward Hehner.
It helped Jamie and Doug deal with their grief by giving tributes to their baby and still including the memory of little Johnny in their lives.
At the time of the miscarriage, Jamie posted on Instagram that their son was "too beautiful for earth," and they will "see each other in heaven."
On what would have been the due date of their son's birth, Jamie discovered she was pregnant again. This time it would be a little girl, and Jamie began calling her daughter a "rainbow baby."
What is a rainbow baby?
As much as Jamie would like to take credit for the term, she is not the one who coined it. However, she did embrace the expression. She had a rainbow drawn on her growing belly while she was pregnant. A rainbow baby is the child born after a mother has experienced the death of a previous baby. The loss could have been the result of a miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, or any other kind of infant death.
A beautiful rainbow usually follows a bad storm. The pregnancy loss was a reality, but the rainbow coming after a storm is a beautiful sight. The rainbow can never replace a storm that has already passed. Instead, it is a sign of hope for what lies ahead. Therefore, the baby coming after the death of an infant sibling is called a rainbow baby.
Jamie and Doug's rainbow baby
Because of the miscarriage of Johnny, Jamie said she held her breath the entire time she was pregnant with her rainbow baby who was born on Tuesday, August 22, 2017, at 5:24 a.m. at a hospital in New Jersey even though she wasn't due until Thursday, August 24. They had already picked out a name for their little girl and shared it during a Facebook Live session before her birth.
They named her Henley Grace Hehner.
The Hehners' rainbow baby weighed 8 pounds, 2 ounces and measured 20.2 inches long. Her parents immediately let fans know about her birth and that all three of them were doing great. To keep everybody up to date about their daughter, the parents set up an Instagram account for her.
Jamie says she knows she will bond with Henley Grace because she didn't have a good relationship with her own mother. Doug is said to be wrapping his daughter around his little finger already.