New to this...

Hello-

My name is Jennifer. I am 35 years old and married. I am new to blogging. Really, I have never even read blogs before I lost my baby. I saw the movie Julie and Julia which helped me to even understand the point of blogs and what blogging even was. I have also come across blogs in different internet searches, but never put much stock into them. Now, I find myself reading blogs whenever I need to remember that someone else has felt the pain I feel. And, it really does make me feel better - I am part of a whole new community now. The babyloss community.

Upon returning home after delivering my baby at 19 weeks resulting in her death, I was searching the internet looking for something to help me understand what just happened to me. I remembered that a girl that I have worked with on charity events had recently been featured on a local news story. She had been blogging on her own experience of babyloss just a couple of months before mine. I remember sitting there watching her news story (at the time I was about 12 weeks pregnant myself) thinking "I feel so sorry for her and her husband. She is such a sweet person and this is so tragic. How scary that something like this could happen, especially at 6 months along." I was also selfishly thinking "I hope and pray that nothing like this happens to me and I will have a healthy baby." Well, I guess my pregnancy would end tragically, too. So, I searched for her blog. I wanted to see what she had to say about her experience and wondered if it were at all similar to mine. Her circumstances were different, but our feelings seemed similar in many ways. We both expected to have healthy, full term babies to bring home and raise them to be wonderful people. Instead, we were both faced with having empty arms, empty nurseries, broken hearts and missing our little girls like crazy. Some of her letters to her baby were exactly how I was feeling too - only I hadn't even realized that I had those thoughts or feelings. I hadn't been able to grasp any thoughts yet - I was so numb. I had no idea I felt the same way she did until I read her words and completely sympathized with her. I found that she had created an organization called Faces of Loss Faces of Hope, where I read so many other broken hearted mother's stories about their own babyloss. I learned that reading other people's experiences can be painful yet cathartic.

So, here I am... blogging. It's because I need some help right now. I don't want to actually talk to anyone specifically about what's going on in my head, but I need to communicate it somehow. I'm not in a deep depression or anything, but I do feel down sometimes. I guess I'll try this and see what happens.

More to come, I guess... but, I can say that I am already feeling better.