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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Loss

This summer I was contacted by a lovely woman who through a friend of a friend or something we knew each other. We had grown up in the same town and had many mutual friends. We also had something else in common. We had both lost a child and both of us to Anencephaly. She had no idea her first baby, a little girl had the neural tube defect.

Instead one day, at 21 weeks pregnant her water spontaneously broke. She went into labor the next morning after a level two Ultra sound and delivered her daughter not long after. She never held her daughter, never named her. It all just happened too fast. We have maintained our friendship and chat occasionally on Facebook and such. She is lovely and I wish her all the best!

Yesterday, I was happily chatting with some online friends and someone mentioned a SIDS death in the gdiaper community. Its another online chat I belong to but that I have not frequented in a while. I hopped over to show some support to Rebecca, the Mama in this horrible story. I shared with her our story and a link to my Jonathan slide shows in case she wanted to utilize NILMDTS.

There are many things people have in common, the loss of a child is one of the worst I think there is. Noone wants to start a conversation with "Hi, my name is __ and my child died too" but sometimes it has to be done. When I was going through the journey with Jonathan I had the amazing support of Krista and Jon, who had already been through it with their little girl Candace about a year before me. Krista was amazing at guiding me when I felt lost. She helped me see light at the end of a very dark tunnel.

I hope to be there in the same way for someone else at some point. I reached out to Rebecca who lost her son to SIDS on Tuesday. Turns out she lives in my area (as does Krista) and I plan to attend the visiting hours on Saturday with some other gdiaper community members to show our support. If nothing else, we want her to feel our presence and love surrounding her.

If you are able this family is having a hard time getting together the funds for the funeral and everything. He husband lost his job when she was pregnant. No one plans for their 4 month old to suddenly die, there just isn't extra money for this.
Here is her link.




2 comments:

Heather Brown said...

I sent a small donation to the family!!! What a tragic thing to happen to lose a child... so sad. '
Love you!!!

Carroll Conversations said...

Jaimey, you are too kind. I'm glad I was able to be a guiding light for you and be a fellow "angel mommy" with you. Not that I would hope for others to get that title, but once it's happened it's nice to be in good company =) I'm so sorry to learn about Rebecca's baby. I'm emailing you some info that might be helpful for her. I'm glad you are there for her.