it's a whole new world out here

I need to post about other things, I guess I will later, but right now I need to admit (to myself, I guess, because no one else reads this) that I finally explored the world of blogs.

I honestly wasn't aware that there was this world out here. Now I suppose I should clarify...of course I am aware that blogs exist and that people write and read blogs. But what I didn't realize is that there are people like me who have blogs like this and who "know" each other and read each others blogs, etc. and basically have a community (for lack of a better way to describe it). I really am not sure how they find each other, except I guess I found a bunch of them--so I guess that I do know possibly how.

Here's what happened: I was on the preemie board on i-village, where I lurk because William was preemie (just didn't survive birth) and subsequent pregnancies have a reasonable chance of being preemie as well. So I check up on the women in the TTC/Pregnant after Preemie folder pretty much daily. As I scroll down to that folder I sometimes see things that catch my eye. A couple of months ago I saw a post from a woman who was pregnant with twins and pretty sure she was going to have them early (so she wasn't technically a preemie mom, and didn't post in the PAP folder because she hadn't previously had a preemie). Anyway, her story really grabbed me--the membranes of one of the babies had broken fairly early in the second trimester and the doctors had grim expectations for that twin (in fact for the pregnancy in general, which they encouraged her to terminate). But despite all of that she maintained hope and the babies continued to grow and develop. She ended up being on hospital bedrest and at a point where at any point they were ready to deliver if the babies showed distress of it there was an infection. She ended up going into labor pretty abruptly (I can't remember how far along she was--I think 28 weeks?). They knew that the baby with the abrupted membranes was smaller than the other twin, and that she may have some health issues to contend with. But they never even considered that she might not live. Unfortunately, she only lived for a couple of hours after delivery. The twin that had the entact membranes is doing great and they expect her to be out of the NICU by February. The mother, of course, is devistated. There are a few women on the stillborn board that I post to that have one surviving twin and one twin that died and I know that it carries along with it it's own burden. So, this is what led me to the "dead baby" blogs. The mom posted under the Prayers and Positive Thoughts folder and in one of the replies the cl put a link to the blog of a woman who's baby died. I clicked on it and started reading a bit. She had links to I think about a dozen other blogs, so I started clicking on them to check them out. And I got sucked into this world.

I guess I am sort of living in this world, but all by myself. I am ok with that, since that was my intention anyway. I have set up this blog as a way to help myself cope with this life I am living now.

I will have to let the idea of this possibly being a community/support swirl around in my head for a while.

It's funny that I hadn't thought of it that way on my own. I mean, I've been to blogs (the first one I found, also through the preemie board, is the tinytruman blog) but I guess I just always felt like that was set up by his parents as a way to share information with their friends and family while he was in the NICU...and that I was just peeking in on them (as a way to find some hope, since he was born at 23 weeks--only a week further along than William).

So that is my big new realization for the month.

Silly me.