Membership in the sad sorority of dead baby mothers does have some perks

When people ask me how I cope with our baby's death I *always* say one of the biggest supports to me is other babylost mothers I've met through blogland.

I first found Sally at Tuesday's Hope through a desperate Google search for something like, "stillbirth, mother, coping" in the wee hours one morning. I read her blog with tears streaming and thinking, I'm not alone. Oh, God, I'm not alone. Look at all these women commenting. It gave me solace and pain all at once to think of all the grieving mothers out there. And then Mirne was the first mother to reach out to me on my blog with a comment. When I was lonely, sad, moved to this new community and isolated in my grief, Mirne was there for me when I was floundering and barely coping. To have someone reach out at a moment like that...I have no words but a heart full of thankfulness.

I am grateful and will be forever to the women who have shared their stories of loss while they listened to mine. The support and understanding is incredible to me. I don't have a lot of time online most days (unless I'm up overnight not sleeping and then I read through as many blogs as I can) but I have tried to add every mother who has ever commented on my blog to my blog list. If you have and don't find yourself it's just because I'm a turnip - or our computer is - and sometimes it doesn't work for me straight away.

Thank you to Franchesca for the Abiding Hope Collage for our son:



It's a beautiful tribute that I treasure. My Grandpa Murphy's favourite hymn was Abide With Me and that runs through my mind as I look at Franchesca's collages and the one she did for my boy. There's something so comforting about seeing my dead child's name written down and remembered.

Here is George's butterfly from sweet Bree, who cannot have known that the day she left me the comment telling me she'd done this for me was a really rough day for me. Seeing her note and then George's butterfly was like a little message from heaven:



To scroll through all the baby names on Bree's blog where she has her Ella's parade of butterflies is beautiful and overwhelming. I never knew how many babies died before we lost our George.

And then one night after I'd slept fitfully I checked my email and got this lovely image from Nimoli at Aaajaa Akul:



She's added our George to her Akul's Fairyland. I love to think of our children playing happily in the hereafter and to connect with Nimoli through our blogs and today on the phone has been a real blessing. Her voice on the phone is every bit as kind as I thought it would be!

The mail this week brought me two lovely items from other grieving mothers. First was this stocking from Ashley, Mackenzie's Mama, who took the time to make this keepsake for our family:



What's interesting is that when we unpacked the Christmas things recently my two oldest boys both commented that we were missing a stocking for their baby brother. When they came home and saw that I'd hung this one from Ashley on the mantle they were so happy! They love it and it made them smile. Danno, who is seven, kept going over to touch it. He smiled and said, "You know, I really wish George was here to see this." We all do.

Then yesterday we got this pretty hand-made heart in a parcel from Jeanette, Florence's mum at Lazy Seamstress:



We immediately put the heart in a special spot out of reach of Albert the dog who was determined to swipe it - do you have pets Jeanette?! - on the Christmas tree. My children were over the moon to find a packet of Cadbury chocolates tucked into that parcel for them. That was so thoughtful and they thoroughly enjoyed them before we went out to their school for the evening performance of their big Christmas pageant. Look at this happy chocolate face and accept a big thank you from all of us:



She would happily come live with you if you let her believe you will always feed her Cadbury chocolates! We don't have the froggy or the fudge ones here unless we pay about six times the cost per bar at a British import shop so they were actually eaten slowly and savoured as extra, extra special.

So a big, big thank you to all of you, named and unnamed, for support and companionship on this sad journey. And special thank you to the mummas who have gifted me with remembrances of our George....and chocolate.

Here's another Newfoundland Christmas carole to end this post on a happy musical note (forgive the cheesy images but I got this off Youtube because it's easy for me to figure out and the song is lovely):