'Real Housewives' alum, husband share joy and pain of being parents of 'rainbow baby'

For the past year and a half, "Real Housewives of Orange County" alumni Kara Keough Bosworth and her husband, Kyle, have celebrated every milestone hit by their 16-month-old son, Vaughn, while also mourning the milestones missed by their late son McCoy.

McCoy Casey Bosworth experienced shoulder dystocia and a compressed umbilical cord during his birth and died six days later, on April 12, 2020.

In March 2021, Kara Bosworth gave birth to Vaughn Mack Bosworth, the couple's "rainbow baby."

"It's wild when we just look at this little rainbow baby thinking that he wouldn't be here if his brother hadn't gone to heaven first," Kara Bosworth told "Good Morning America." "Even finding out he was a boy was just such a gift that we still get to have a son here on Earth, and we get to look at this little blonde-haired boy and think about what our other blonde-haired boy would be doing."

A "rainbow baby" is a baby born after a pregnancy loss, whether a miscarriage, stillbirth or death following childbirth, as the Bosworths experienced.

"All the rain and hardship and sorrow that you felt during that loss, you have a rainbow that's supposed to bring you brightness and joy and happiness, whether it be tears of joy or smiles of joy," said Kyle Bosworth, who, with Kara, also has an older daughter, Decker. "Our rainbow baby was born nearly a year after we lost our second child and every day is an amazing reminder of how he is growing and what he does and his milestones."

The Bosworths said they joined a community bigger than they imagined in becoming parents of a rainbow baby, a community they said experiences both joy and heartache on a daily basis.

Kara Bosworth described the immense gratitude and joy when Vaughn was placed on her chest, crying, after childbirth, describing it as the "single happiest moment" of her life.

She said the joy of Vaughn from that day on also came with some guilt.

"I kind of had a lot of guilt about those moments, like is it OK if he makes me so, so happy? And it is, it's OK," she said. "You can have grief and sadness and happiness and those can sit beside each other, and that's my experience as a rainbow parent."

Kara Bosworth said she knew to expect an emotionally difficult pregnancy after losing McCoy, explaining that she never publicly revealed her pregnancy with Vaughn because she was so scared of another loss.

"I hid because I didn't want to talk about it," she said. "I wanted to just close my eyes until he was here."

What she did not expect, she said, were the emotions that would come after birth, with parenting a rainbow baby.

"When you're a parent that's experienced the loss of a child in any form, you already feel like you've been struck by lightning a little bit," Kara Bosworth said. "They don't actually talk about parenting a rainbow baby and how there's a lot of pent-up kind of worry that you'll get struck by lightning again."

She continued, "You just have to sit in the joy a lot, because you have to just shake off a little bit of the clouds that can come with the worry of parenting your little rainbow."

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The Bosworths said even though Vaughn is their third child, it feels like parenting a first child again, where they are concerned with every bump and bruise.

"When rainbow babies get hurt or they're sick, it's just different," said Kara Bosworth. "With this little boy, the pediatrician is tired of me I'm sure but we're always like, 'Is he OK? He's got a scrape on his knee.'"

Added Kyle Bosworth, "You go back to the first-child syndrome kind of thing. You don't want anything to happen to him ever, or to ever go through some serious trauma, but it's going to happen. They're kids."

The Bosworths said they live their lives along the "fine line" of worrying about their son, but also experiencing the other perspective they say comes with being a rainbow parent, which is treasuring every single moment.

"I remember when he was first born, I would go, 'Oh, listen to his cries, aren't they so sweet? Listen to his lungs. Listen to how loud he can cry,'" said Kara Bosworth. "Everyone probably thought I was insane but I was just treasuring the fact that he could cry. It's such a lesson you don't even know until you have a child that couldn't cry."

Last week, Vaughn attended his first day of preschool, another moment the Bosworths said they saw as nothing but a celebration that he is alive and growing.

"Everyone was like, 'Oh, did you cry?,' and I'm like, 'No. Watching him grow is the joy of my life,'" said Kara Bosworth. "You think you want them to stay little until you know what it's like for them to stay little and frozen in your mind and then you're like, no, grow baby, grow. Get bigger. Go to school. Have a life."

She said she notices her new perspective in other instances too, like when Vaughn makes a mess while eating a meal, or shares food with the family's dogs.

"Me pre-child loss, I would have been like this is a mess. This is inconvenient. This is slowing down my day," said Kara Bosworth. "And now I'm like, let's just stop and watch how cute he is playing finger paint with his yogurt."

Bosworth described having more of a sense of peace as a parent now, saying, "You're just like, this doesn't matter. This is silly. These are petty things. This is not something I need to stress about."

When it comes to parenting a rainbow baby together, Kara Bosworth described the journey from losing McCoy to welcoming Vaughn and raising him and Decker as the thing she is "most proud of" in their marriage.

She said she encourages other parents of rainbow babies to give each other space to both grieve and find joy.

"[Kyle] was out living life having to support our family and take our daughter to activities, but I needed that, and he needed also some permission to have those days when he didn't want to get out of bed either," Kara Bosworth said of the time after McCoy's death. "We were able to give that to each other in different times, but we didn't grieve the same way."

One of the biggest lessons the couple has learned from other parents of rainbow babies, and from siblings of rainbow babies, is the importance of keeping their child's memory alive.

For the Bosworths, that has meant keeping photos of McCoy around their home, talking about him with Decker and Vaughn and teaching their kids that signs of beauty in nature like rainbows and dolphins and butterflies are signs that McCoy is saying hello.

It has also meant continuing to share photos and memories of McCoy on social media and working to help other families in McCoy's honor, including raising money for a local hospital's neonatal intensive care unit that is now named for McCoy.

"It's really unique when those milestones aren't physical, if you will, of like walking, dribbling a soccer ball, him saying first words, but then to be able to say that we hit $100,000 for this charity in his name, that's a milestone," said Kyle Bosworth. "Or someone got through a dilemma that they were going through, or their child was the same birthday as him and they're walking and they're so happy and he was able to get remembered from this situation, that gives us hope and excitement and happiness."

Added Kara Bosworth, "We still get to feel a sense of pride, which is what a parent feels about a child. I think that that's something that rainbow parents understand specifically, that other people might be [uncomfortable] about it, but we're still proud of our son."

Kara Bosworth said she and her husband are especially touched when they hear from rainbow babies who are now adults and remember how their parents kept their deceased sibling's memory alive.

"It's powerful and emotional for me to hear from those adults and hear about essentially generations of families that have experienced what we've experienced," she said. "This kind of beautiful, golden thread that has wound its way for generations of parents and families who have suffered like we have but then also found joy after like we have."