I just wanted to thank you all for creating this space and for lighting the way. I came from niobe's blog. I wish this existed two years ago when my baby boy died. medusas -- so perfect.

after struggling with infertility I finally conceived my first child, a son. he died at 21 weeks gestation after I suffered p-prom and my body failed to sustain him. that was more than 2 years ago, feb. 2006.

in spite of numerous surgeries and treatments since then, I haven't been able to get pregnant again, and we've run out of options. while I continue to grieve my baby boy, I now must somehow accept that he was my only chance for a real live child. and I have no idea how to do that... ~luna

I came here via Tash & Julia's blogs. I'm coming up to 10 years since my daughter Katie was stillborn, on August 7, 1998, when I was 37. Despite fertility treatments, we were unable to conceive again. We decided not to adopt & as a result are living childless/free. At age 47, I have stopped hoping for that miracle pregnancy. I have a good life. But (especially in this 10th year), I still think constantly about my little girl & the different life we were supposed to be leading. I started my blog last October, partly as a way to work through some of those memories & feelings.

I look forward to visiting here often!

I, too, came via Julia's and Tash's blogs. Just over a month ago (one month, six days, to be exact), I delivered and lost our twins in one fell swoop. After a struggle with infertility we thought it was too good to be true that we could be expecting twins, a boy and a girl, after our first IVF. It was too good to be true. With no prior signs at all of any complications, I started feeling contractions at 23w2d, and by the time we got to labor and delivery and saw a doctor it was too late - I'd had a placental abruption and was too far along to stop labor.

Thank you for creating this space. Thank you for understanding what most don't want to even consider, and cannot understand. Most importantly, thank you for conveying ever so much more gracefully and poignantly what I have felt, feel now, and will feel weeks, months and years from now.

-Busted

A few weeks ago, I found the Sweet/Salty blog thru Shutter Sisters. Wow. So very powerful. I am a survivor of loss, my triplets would have been 8 at the end of this month. 8 years seems so long ago now, and when I read your stories, I am farther down the road, but I am still travelling it. I always will be. I spent 5 wks in the hospital before having them at 24wks, that following 2 emergency cerclages. They survived a few days. Sigh. I now have two daughters: 6 and 3. My second pg was high risk, make no mistake, but Olivia arrived at 37w at her scheduled c-section. She was our miracle, at the time, the biggest one I thought I would ever know. FF 3 yrs and I become pg again, with the help of fertility drugs. My ovary ruptures at 8wks and I have emergency surgery to remove it and my tube...and my second girl, Shelby, survives. Now she is a miracle too. Just a tad more marvelous is the fact that she is here, but do not tell her sister that!.
Anyway, I am very open about my loss. A true sadness for me is this: when I spent the 5wks in the high risk ward, I truly believed I would survive this and come back to help others in need. Only, I had the undesirable outcome...my babies died. So you cannot exactly go back and be a cheerleader for those women struggling through every day when you did not get the happy ending. But I did, I have a family now. And if sharing or listening can help even one soul, I am all for it.
I admire and thank you all for creating this space.

I joined the ranks of deadbaby mamas when my son died, at 34 weeks gestation, on October 31, 2007. Having experienced 3 pregnancies prior to his loss, and birthing 2 breathing, screaming babies, it is an understatement to say I was shocked by his death. His death has rendered me completely changed and I find it so hard to move forward when all I want to do is go back.

Today marks the six month anniversary since I birthed him still. I miss him incredibly. I know that there is no way I could have made it to this point without having found this supportive, caring community of grieving mothers. What I have come to learn, through your blogs and the wisdom of so many women I have come to know and care for over the last six months, is that I am not alone. I am comforted by this.

Thank you for this site. You have all helped so many already, I am confident you can continue to do so through this collaboration of hope and healing.

Thank you for creating this space. I found this on the MDC boards and wanted to stop by. I lost my son when he was 3 1/2 days old on December 4th 2006. He was a NICU baby, born at 35 weeks with an "easy to fix" congenital heart defect. Of course, nothing was "easy" when it came to my son and he passed before he could be "fixed."
Since my son, I've also experienced two early miscarriages. My husband and I currently have no living children, although we're hoping to remedy that someday.

Such beauty and bravery ladies. I'm thinking of you and wishing you well on this journey and outreach.

Thank you for allowing me into your space. It's truly an honor to listen to you and learn from you.

I am here via Sweet/Salty, which I just found a few days ago. I have not lost a full term baby, but I lost my son at 17 weeks on April 2nd of this year, and I lost his brother at 13 weeks last September. Right the grief is so thick still. I feel so lucky to have the two children that I do have and yet so unlucky at the same time. I don't want to play the "my suffering is worse than your suffering game" but I don't want to butt in where I am not wanted either. I hope it is okay if I hang out here from time to time.

I found my way here via Sweet/Salty. It has been 19 months since I gave birth to twin boys. One healthy, one not. I lost the second of my twins at 3 months of age. I knew when he was born that our time was limited, but nothing prepared me for losing him. Almost a year and a half has passed and the grief is still present in every moment of my life. Thank you for creating this space. I am sorry that others have traveled this road, but I find strength knowing that others are surviving the trip. This is such a wonderful place of understanding and hope.

Thank you for creating this space. We lost our daughter 4 months ago at 36 weeks gestation. I had a problem-free, textbook pregnancy and an autopsy was unable to tell us why our only child, our whole world, is gone. I'm glad to be able to read thoughts from those a little bit further down this hard road.

Thank you so much for setting this site up!
After years of trying (unsuccessfully) for a baby, our first baby was conceived in February 2000. And she (yes, it was a girl, but we only found out when it was too late) died on 13 July 2000. That's almost 8 years ago. And even though since then I've had two more daughters, both premature, both tiny, both weak, but now tall and bright and beautiful (Carla in December 2001 and Lydie in April 2004), the pain of that loss from 2000 is still with me, always with me.
I live in France and here the law says that babies born before 23 weeks of amenorrhea are not fetuses and are considered to be miscarriages. My daughter, my beautiful little girl, was born at 22 weeks and 6 days. She was incinerated, and I quote the midwife who "looked after me" immediately after the deeply traumatic birth, "with all the other abortion detritus". That phrase haunts me and will haunt me all my life. My baby's ashes were scattered in an unknown place, all I have of her now is photos taken in the autopsy suite 4 days after she died (they're not beautiful photos, but they mean the world to me).
I hate to be so down about all this; it's been almost 8 years. I should treasure my living girls. And I do, oh, how I do (despite the crabbiness to which I'm prone, of course).
But my first girl...what can I say? She's my angel. She has no name (my husband wasn't interested in giving her a name, he grieved in a way totally different to me), my living daughters don't know about her (yet - I will tell them, but only when they're old enough to understand why I still can't talk about her without crying), almost no one remembers her "birthday" (not to mention the day she should have been born), just my best friend back in England.
On the anniversary, as I have to grieve and remember alone, I decided that I would treat myself to something made with lavender. The bushes were in bloom everywhere here in the south of France when my angel died, and I'll always associate that smell with her. So last year I bought myself some lavendar bath oil and had a long, tearful bath in memory of my first sweet girl.
Your site is important, this is such a taboo subject. I wish you all strength and happiness to help you get through the bad times. And, unlike most people who told me "I'd soon get over it", I pray that I never do - getting over it might mean forgetting, and I never want to forget my little girl.
Bless you all (spoken by someone with no religion, so spoken only from the heart) and thank you.

I found my way here by the candlelit path bon laid out from cribchronicles. It will be 2 years in June since I lost my child to miscarriage, after 9 years and 4 surgeries to try to conceive. Thank-you for creating this space.

I have my boys....all 3 of them. I love them dearly and they made me a mother in 2 very different ways. Yet it felt like my last spark of hope was ripped from me that day as I lay amongst the machines the talk of surgery, the overly chipper doctor and the cries of the wonderfully beautiful live babies from the nursery 4 doors down the hall from me as I hid in a corner trying not to be envelopped by my own hell of misery and the darkness. There are days where the pain and the dark still climb out to threaten me, and it is so nice to know that I can come type a hello and shed a tear in this place. A glow in the woods this is indeed

My boy Walker died at six days old a little over a year ago. He was born with brain damage, I don't know why. We had a long, wonderful birth, for which I am grateful. I miss him.

My name is Cheli, I came here through Kates blog :) I've been reading her site for about a year and a half now. I'm here because my daughter, my first born, was born at 30 weeks after a diagnosis of IUGR and was given up on before she was even born. She suffered major brain damage due to lack of oxygen and nutrients in utero caused by a prematurely calcified placenta and subsequently wasn't strong enough to survive. I have since given birth to 2 beautiful boys. A 2 year old born on his sister's birthday and a 2 month old born Feb 15th. My children were born Feb 11th, 1997, Feb 11th, 2006, and Feb 15th, 2008.

I came here via Sweet|Salty. Suburban Bliss sent me to Dutch who sent me there. This was back when Ben and Liam were in the NICU and I felt that I had something to offer as another NICU Mama. I felt like I belonged and have stayed, even though now our situations are very different.

My son was diagnosed at 3 days old with Down syndrome (T21) and Tetralogy of Fallot (heart defect). He has since had 4 hospital stays, 2 of them for open heart surgeries. We are now pediatric cardiology warriors, not something I say with pride. While I still cry for the boy I thought I had for those first few days, I know that is different from many of the mamas here because I still have him here to hug when I cry. I know there are plenty of places for moms of kids with T21 to go online, but they never seem to talk about the heart stuff even though 50% of these kids supposedly have heart defects. I know there are plenty of places for moms of kids with heart problems to go online, but they seem to think that having a "heart kid" is the biggest issue a mom could live through. I think I like it here, with the community around Kate, because there is a certain perspective that neither the T21 or the "heart kids" moms seem to acknowledge.

As we sat as brand new parents and tried to fathom the idea that not only did people at this hospital think we could take care of a baby and were willing to send him home with us, they so easily said that he would need open heart surgery at about 3-6 months of age. As we absorbed this information we discussed the possibility that he might not make it. My biggest fear was always the general anesthesia: what if he didn't want to wake up or didn't have the strength to wake up? And in fact he had to be bagged after the first procedure. For me even the 2 catheterizations that were supposed to be at maximum an overnight stay (ha!) were as frightening as the 2 surgeries because they all required general anesthesia. I have no idea how I would manage without him in my life now. I felt the same when they whisked him to the NICU. I'm the same way every time he wakes up and his lips look blue (note to self: get him a blanket that isn't blue). I think in some ways I'm still the mom in the NICU wondering if I have more than this little bit of time with him. I'm frozen at that unsure stage some days.

That is why I've followed Kate here. In many ways you all have moved on and I'm still stuck wondering if tomorrow is the day I wake up and am on your path. He's almost 3 and still not talking really. I have yet to hear a "Mom" from either of my kids. Maybe on that day I'll stop feeling like he's that baby they could take away? Maybe I'm just a worrier and I'll never move on? I don't know. What I do know is that I feel better here. And I'm able to let things out here and learn about myself here like nowhere else.

My name is Sue. Like Luna, I struggled with infertility for years before becoming pregnant. At 20 weeks, I lost twin boys over the course of 10 traumatic days due to PPROM (though it may have been sparked by incompetent cervix and/or pre-term labor due to the IUFD of one twin).

I hope someday to have a living child (or two), but neither my husband nor I are ready yet. We hope there is still time... and hope.

It's been horrible, but I have found much comfort in this community. I am so glad to find this new space, just for us. Thank you for creating it.

I found this site through BlogHer. After I lost Scott (26 weeks along) in December...I was hungry for the words of sympathy and to share in the pain that I sadly found all across the internet.

The relief that there was people out there who really understood the pain and the horror of the experience was almost cathartic to me.

It DID help.

I looked around the web and found many stories..many sisters.

However, some sites really disturbed me. Some sites dedicated to their little dead babies. People agonizing in the pain and trauma....to me this felt 'wrong'..I backed away.

While I think blogging and sharing our stories and being their for our sisters is SO important...I also think I have had move away slightly...I have to STILL live my life.

I have two children.
My husband wants us to heal and talk about trying again...

I had to get to that part and not be wracked with guilt for 'betraying' Scott or for not being sad enough or grieving enough.

We all deal in different ways...

I am changed by Scott's lack of life and his little death.

I will never be the same.

I had never experienced grief like that. Even when my dad died...I was away from him physically and mentally already...THIS. THIS was enough for me.

I hope we all can live and enjoy life after the horror.

We can all have our good days and bad days...

But we have to continue our journey too..even when it is without those we thought would be keeping us company

So much thinking and building and brainstorming and here we are, passing around the whoopie pies. Amazing. I'm so moved by all your stories, your courage and memories and honouring of all your children. You're all so welcomed here. I need your voices.. we all do.

And crunchy carpets, you've struck on something very important to me. I want this site to be about more than our babies - this may seem counter-intuitive, but I didn't want this space to be classified as a grief or a loss blog. I'm not that one-dimensional, and none of us are - if anything, this is a life blog, a place where we can figure out how to get up again, try and be mothers again, or find our paths elsewhere and in other ways.

So you're right. The blackness is welcome, because it is part of our new selves, but much of our reflecting will be around how we move forward and keep our babies in our hearts at the same time.

I come here from a different path, a different glow in the same grief-laden woods. I was a parentless child with my dad passing away 20 years ago this coming summer, my daughter the same age I was when he fought cancer and lost. I find myself looking at grief a wholly different way from new perspectives: now as a parent rather than a child. Being here makes me think about what my dad thought losing his children too soon. I think, though, that's it's not solely about grief or loss, but how to move on and function with that extra burden, that extra pain, those extra memories, that extra fill-in-the blank.

One year ago this week my daughter was born and died. We had no idea anything was wrong until she was born. This has been a rough year for me and I really could use some help in learning how to deal with this better. Please send me blogs that may help me. paigefreestone@hotmail.com
Check out my blog.
http://londonsjournal.blogspot.com

Via Sweet Juniper, to Sweet/Salty, I come here. I have not lost a child in death. I have a son diagnosed with a rare chromosomal syndrome at 20 months. I feel as though I fell off a cliff the day I heard the words--abnormal karyotype. I am still falling. I am not a perfectionist. I see the beauty in him and applaud his milestones. But it fucking sucks. I mourn his future sadness/anger/feeling alone--whatever and my future struggles alongside him. It really, really sucks because it won't go away. Each day doesn't get better. Sometimes I wish I miscarried. For that, I feel like a horrible piece of shit.

You know, this site, it says it's for motherlost babies, but nobody, not once, has ever responded to one of my comments. How is this a community? It feels like a clique. Somebody caring sent me to this site thinking it would help, and I left feeling more isolated than ever.

I came here via Mothergoosemouse and Crunchy Carpets. My son, Matthew, passed away of SIDS at 3 1/2 months in September of 2003. He would have turned five on June 7th and I would be preparing him for Kindergarten.

There is not one day that goes by where I don't blame myself.

I have two boys, age 11 and 8. I am thinking about trying again in the next year, but I am completely terrified. I feel like I waited to long.

I'm glad that this site is here. It isn't that I don't talk about my son on my blog, but I am less and less comfortable posting about it there. For one? People who have been reading have already said all there is to say and for another? I've had some pretty nasty comments and emails when I do, so I just don't feel comfortable talking about it very often there.

It's just nice to know there is a place to go.

Ellie, it hurts my heart that you feel that way, and we actually did respond to you, both directly and indirectly along with everyone.

Everyone coming here has been hurt, and has so much to share and release. We've barely been live for a week, and have been very busy just trying to make this site live and functioning with everything we envisioned. There's a lot going on behind the scenes that you don't see.

Again, this hurts. You and I are on the same plane in terms of Walker and Liam, and I know how raw it still is for you. But please understand that we're doing our best, juggling life and also trying to build something larger than ourselves.

Please be patient with us. We want you here with us.

I found this site via Niobe. I've been reading Niobe's blog since shortly after my son Andrew died in July 2006. After he died, I read deadbabymama blogs all day and night. I needed to find women who had lived through their babies dying in the hope that they could teach me how to do it. At that time, I didn't think I could make it through a single day, let alone months and years. This community helped me grieve in a way that my real-life friends and family couldn't. I'm not one for therapy. Reading blogs was my therapy.

About my son: Andrew was born 13 weeks premature because of my severe preeclampsia. He struggled in the NICU for a little over two months until my husband and I decided to take him off the ventilator and let him die (the hardest and easiest decision of my life). I thought my two months in the NICU was hell. I was wrong. It was only when Andrew died that his suffering ended and mine really began. Fast forward two years later... I now have a 9 month old healthy son, for whom I am very grateful.

But grief and guilt are still a huge part of my life. I still read deadbabymama blogs every day. This site is a wonderful idea. I wish it had been around two years ago. Thanks.

Well, I'm going to put this out there, and it's a little scary b/c I have no idea if this is a safe place for this or not. I found a link to this website on a private forum, made especially for moms in my situation, where I know I can say anything i want (or need to say) and no one will judge me or say mean things to me, which, in this raw state, I'm not so sure I could handle. Nevertheless, everyone here seems so nice so I'll give it a shot. Plus, I have a feeling there are other moms out there like me who want to be part of this dialogue, so for them (and for me) I'll tell my story.

My name is Debbie, I'm 36. My husband and I tried for four years to get pregnant and we just couldn't seem to conceive. We eventually saw a specialist, who said there was nothing wrong with us. We tried some drugs, a few rounds of artificial insemination, and then took out the big guns for a round of IVF. It worked on our first try, thankfully (or at least we thought)--b/c we didn't have money for two.

About a month into the pregnancy, we learned that they had manipulated our sperm and egg in a way we hadn't wanted them to. Shocker-but unless something was wrong, we'd let it fly.

A few months after that, we learned that we were both carriers of a fatal genetic disease, and there was a 25% chance that our baby would be affected. Two weeks later, on Feb. 20, 2008, we got the devastating news that our baby was, in fact affected. Someone has still neglected to lift up the Mac truck that ran over me that day. It's like I can remember it whizzing by me, the noise, the wind, they say it crashed into me, but I don't really remember it. I just remember waking up in the hospital--metaphorically speaking that is. And even though I've been "released" from the hospital, I'm nowhere near okay.

After three agonizing weeks of investigating and interviewing families afflicted w/ our baby's diagnosis, we made the unfortunate decision to terminate the pregnancy. I would have been 20 weeks the day after the procedure. It is, by far, the worst decision I will ever have to make.

In a terrifying moment before the procedure started, I collapsed into hysteria, I almost couldn't do it, but my husband held me up, he looked into my eyes, and he reminded me that our pain was momentary compared to the life of suffering our baby would have to endure. I knew that--I knew that was what led us to our decision. We had decided to do what we did b/c, like every single parent whose ever been in our shoes, we loved our baby way too much to let it suffer--all for own desire to have a child.

We named our baby girl, although I'll keep her name to myself. I love her so much and think of her every day. This grief is strange b/c I can't tell most people what really happened for fear that they'll judge me or stick their nose in my deeply personal business, or worse yet, underestimate how absolutely horrible this decision was. Everyone has their views on this topic, please don't tell me you would have kept it and I'm going to hell for my decision, b/c believe me, I am certain there is no one else on earth, besides my husband, who has the right to comment on what we should have done.

Anyway, although my story is not like everyone else's here, I am a mom who has lost her baby, and I appreciate being able to tell my story.

thank you kate and tash, your comments mean so much. i feel like i've just been hugged.

Today is my second wedding anniversary. My husband is asleep in bed. If he knew I was awake I know he would want to talk, want to comfort me. But I got up quietly and tucked pillows next to him so he would continue to sleep. He's carried my pain in addition to his own so many times when I could not bear it, he deserves a break.
Our son Oliver was born and died on April 3rd, 2008. Actually, it would probably be more accurate to say he died late at night on April 2nd and was born on April 3rd at 39 weeks and 5 days. I had a perfectly healthy pregnancy. Oliver was perfectly healthy too, except that I know that from his autopsy and not from his apgar scores. He died during my early labor, probably because of the umbilical cord tucked next to his head that was compressed during contractions. During my lowest moments I think that literally means that my labor, my body, killed my baby. And I just want to die too.
Fortunately I'm more sane than that most of the time, which is good because I'm going back to work today. I'm afraid. I went to the allergist yesterday, and I filled out a questionnaire that asked "any recent hospitalizations?" I wrote "vaginal delivery." To be thorough or polite, or maybe both, she said "congratulations, and how is your baby?" I wanted to say "dead, thank you for asking." Sometimes I think I must really be an asshole, that I think of saying things like that to perfectly nice people, innocent bystanders to my tragedy. But I didn't. I mumbled something about "stillborn." And then she offered me a prescription for an antidepressant. She meant it as a kindness, the only way she could think of to ease my pain. But it seems absurd - a pill a day to fill the hole in my body and my soul that was my son.

Thank you for this space. 3am is a lonely time. I cannot bring myself to burden friends and family with my pain in the middle of the night.

Big hugs to you, Sarah. I am so sorry about Your baby Oliver. And it is hard to not blame and hate our bodies after such a tragedy has happened. I too, sometimes think of saying those absurd things, like to someone complaining, "So what? My baby died!"
I wish you the best going back to work and healing.

Thank you all for creating this site. A friend told me about it and thus opened up the world of babylost mamas' blogs to me.

After ttc our first for 1 year and 8 months, my hubby and I finally got our BFP in January following an IUI with injectables on New Year's Eve. We have never been happier...until 3 weeks later when we found out it was TWINS! We couldn't believe how lucky we were.

I went into preterm labor at 16 weeks, and after 18 hours of labor, delivered our daughter, Abernathy, and our son, Malachi on April 10, 2008. Cultures later determined that one twin's placenta had a severe acute infection that likely caused the labor to start.

Even though we didn't have very long with them, even though the pregnancy was incredibly difficult, we love our twins more than life itself. Every day they were part of our lives was a gift.

We are just lost without them. We plod through our lives, one foot somehow going in front of the other, and so we tread water through moments, days, and weeks. But I keep wondering, what is the point of filling up all the minutes of our lives, when our perfect, amazing babies are gone?

I want to thank you all for creating this site. I stumbled here yesterday and already it's become a refuge for me. We lost our daughter Charlotte 7 weeks ago today; I had an emergency C section at 24 1/2 weeks because of HELLP syndrome. She didn't make it; she lived for just over 2 hours. The wound is still so raw and fresh, in a lot of ways the last couple of months feel like a dream, rather, a nightmare.

My heard breaks for others who've suffered similarly. I'm glad we can come together.

Almost eight months ago my baby girl was born prematurely due to (what I now refer to as) my stupid incompetent cervix. She lived for fifteen minutes in my arms before silently slipping into the next world. I have been coping and managing very well up until now. Now I am 20 weeks pregnant with my second child, and as 22 weeks and 4 days approaches, I descend into irrational hysteria with very little provocation. I weep more or as much as I did in the days and weeks after her death. I can't believe that this or anyone else's pregnancy will result in the birth of a baby who lives and gets to go home. I am a faithful person, and I try to put my trust in God, but I feel so desperately that he let me down when my baby died. I have been scouring the web over the last week, secretly searching for... something. My husband thinks it is unhealthy for me to be looking at blog and websites about other people's dead babies. But I think that I am looking for others who know my story. Those I can just sit with, with my hands wrapped around a warm mug, and we don't have to say anything, because we just KNOW. Thank you for being a place where I can be a babylost mama.

Thank you for this space. I look forward to all of us healing together. My son was stillborn almost 4 years ago (August 2004.) I was 36 weeks pregnant and went in for a routine office visit and there was no heartbeat. Up until then I had a very easy, noneventful pregnancy. I had conceived naturally but since then, I have not able to get pregnant again. We tried fertility treatments for a while and now we are just coasting.

Seven babies - seven babies (well, really 9 if you count my one multiples pg that never really got off the ground - I just usually count them together since they came together) begun that I couldn't finish. I somehow managed to get it right 6 times. I bear the scars for all of them - the battles won, the battles lost. I wonder what the heck was I thinking? How could I put myself through all that? But, really, I know - I know - because that was the only way for me. I did it for them, I did it for me - and in the end, I'm not sorry - sad, yes - but never sorry.

Thank you for this place and for sharing your thoughts and giving me and my little ones safe harbor.

I know I am late coming to this post.... not sure this will even be viewed... but I wanted to post anyway. I found this site through a convoluted series of links... jumping from one blog to another, one tragedy to another.

I'm Michelle. I live in the New York City area. I lost my sweet girl in March. She had Trisomy 18. Your words, Kate, about the failure of your own body resonate so deeply with me. Given that something like 95-97 percent of Trisomy 18 occurrences are linked to the egg, I feel that I failed my much-wanted daughter from before the moment her life even began.

Thank you, Kate. I appreciate that more than I can adequately express.

My name is Sophie and I had a baby girl called Jordan Faraday on Christmas morning 2007. A few weeks before she was born she somehow managed to stop the flow of oxygen to her body, possibly as she turned into breech position. It caused severe brain damage. She was in NICU for three and a half months before she came home. After two weeks at home with us she had an episode and was readmitted through emergency into the ICU ward. She was ventilated for 11 days. In the next six weeks, in the children's ward, we watched our baby girl suffer one set back after another. Finally, when we could bare it no more, the doctors admitted that there wasn't anything more they could do and that she was dying. We opted to take her out of that dreaded hospital and we took her to a palliative care facility. We were able to stay with her as a family for a week before she passed away in our arms. This was two months ago.

Like Tash I feel like the whole experience has been torture. I loved that little girl more than I can express but I regret every second of pain that she had been in in her short life. If the same thing happened again I wouldn't hesitate to let her go, rather than have her suffer. I feel like I watched her die a slow and miserable death and it was agony.

I found the blog through Tash, who I was put onto through Kalakly. I had not found anyone else who I could even remotely identify with. I have found some now and that makes me feel so much better.

Thankyou for creating this site.

I found this site after reading an interview with Elizabeth McCracken. My baby Sam was born still on August 8, 2008 (supposed to be a lucky day, hah) due to a suspected cord accident. He was 36 weeks and perfect in every way. Thanks for creating this site.

Welcome, Monique, I'm glad you found us. we're hoping to feature an interview with Elizabeth soon.. we've heard great things about her book.

Thanks for being here with us.
xo