Project Hope

If you have been reading my blog since the beginning, you probably know that I had two pregnancy losses before having my precious babies.

My first pregnancy was in late 2006 and ended at 6 weeks. The doctors called it, "just one of those things." In their words, something was wrong, it was common, etc. It was December 20th, I was on my way out of town and stopped at my doctor for my first real checkup after the checkup where they confirmed I was pregnant. I never in a million years thought a miscarriage would happen to me. I don't know why. Maybe because I was idealistic and just thought it happened to other people. Anyhow, it was crushing. Jason and I had been trying to conceive for about 6 months. I took that loss very hard, and became involved in Infant Loss Awareness month through some friends at school who had also lost babies. It's something no one talks about until it happens to them.

The next pregnancy was about 6 months later. We were anxious to try again and got a positive in early summer of 2007. At almost exactly 12 weeks, right before I planned to tell school and my friends, we lost the second baby. It was awful. I was at my school's open house greeting my new class for next year, mingling with parents. I excused myself to go to the bathroom and was bleeding. I freaked. I grabbed my best friend, Jill, and she took me to the hospital, no questions asked. After an eternity, I learned my second baby was gone. I scheduled my second D&C for the next day. Unfortunately, I pretty much went into "labor" that night around 4:00 and by my 9:00 surgery, was having delivery contractions. They asked if I wanted to deliver the baby and then have the procedure. I told them to knock me out ASAP. Later we were told that the baby had an abnormal amount of chromosomes and it would never live outside of my body. We both went into a depression. Understandably so. It was a dark, hard time. I wish I had something, anything to remember that baby by. I still wonder both of their sexes.

When I read Diana's (Hormonal Imbalances) recent post about Project Hope, I actually felt compelled to help. I KNOW the feeling. So what if your baby was 6, 12, or 20 weeks and you lost it? YOU LOST YOUR BABY. You want a memory. Everyone deserves that. I am so grateful for Laura from Bits of Splendor for doing this. Making a difference. Caring.

You don't have to have gone through a pregnancy loss to care or be involved. My involvement right now is this button and blog post. Can I do more? Sure. I'm weighing out what I'm available for. I pray that some of you will read the links to the actual Project Hope post and maybe just post about it. Let's try to make women that experience this now have a scrap of something to make them feel just a little but better.