October.

The month of October brings with it many different "charity" events and international "days". Breast cancer awareness http://www.takeaction.org.nz/. Teen Cancer Bandanna Appeal http://www.canteen.org.nz/get-involved/bandanna-challenge-2010. Choptober http://www.choptober.co.nz/growers. To name just a few.
My Nana died of breast cancer. On Wednesday I will be walking the Women Only Breast Cancer walk with all my colleagues from work. This is a national event that happens in every town during the month of October.
At the mall yesterday there were some teenagers selling bandanna's for the CanTeen Appeal. One of the kids selling was wearing her beads. Kids in NZ get a bead that goes on a necklace for every treatment, doctor visit, injection, xray, blood test, etc ... this girls bead went around 3 times and were hanging down below her chest.
Guys are growing "lamb chops" to raise money for their chosen charity. People go out of their way to give money and support to various charities.

The above mentioned are just a few of the big charities which are great, and do an excellent job.

I want to draw attention now to one of the "days" observed in October. October 15th to be exact. http://www.october15th.com/

I know SO many people who have lost children to miscarriage, still birth, or infant death. My mother in law lost a child at 3 months of age to a heart condition, that 45 years ago was untreatable. Had Richard been born now, he would have survived. A very close friend of mine lost a granddaughter whose heart stopped beating when the Mum was 40 weeks 2 days pregnant. No explanation was ever given as to why Georgie died. A lady I met over the internet lost her baby daughter, Hazel, to a heart defect, she was 14 days old.

3 years ago today, October 17, I was pregnant, with a baby due in May 2008. On October 28 I started bleeding. On November 1st, the day before my birthday, I had an operation to remove the remains of our dead baby from my uterus.
In the following month or two, 2 parents at the daycare centre where I work, suffered miscarriages. I cried with them, at work, as I knew and understood their pain. Both these 2 parents, and myself, have gone on to have successful pregnancies, and we all now have beautiful little boys, Jacob being the eldest, then Jayden is 22 months, and Michael is 19 months old.
As well as these 2 women, there are others I have met through my church that have had miscarriages. Some of them I know the story, some have not shared their experience with us. One of them has just had a healthy little girl, born in August. One of my other friends, a lady I went to teachers college with, has suffered 5 miscarriages. She is 31 years old and has just had a hysterectomy. Her chance to get pregnant and have her own baby taken away completely by medical issues that caused her to miscarry, over and over again. Her husband and her have become foster parents, but it is not the same.

But the people I know the best, the people who have really shared their hearts with me about how their miscarriage affected them, are people I have met online. We all met through a website designed to celebrate pregnancy and babyhood. Little did we know when we joined that site that we would find each other through our grief of loosing our May 08 baby.
Some that were in the group have left us. Some have chosen for whatever their reasons not to stay a part of the group. Yet there are still 20 of us who regularly post on a forum that we created to honour each other and our May babies. We called it Base Camp. The place to meet where we can prepare to climb the mountain before us. Most of us have climbed the Post Miscarriage pregnancy mountain and we have babies in our arms now that we can love. One of them has recently announced that she is pregnant again, she is now 14 weeks along - hooray! She suffered more miscarriages after loosing her May baby. And another has just come to the place where she and her husband are ready to start trying to conceive a baby. So far they have empty arms.
Some of these women have had the privaledge of meeting each other in real life. I won't ever get that chance, but I have spoken to a couple of them on the telephone. Living across the Pacific Ocean from the majority of them makes meeting them pretty near impossible.

Anyway, I guess what I am saying is that October is a significant month. Not only do we celebrate Jacob's birthday, but we remember our own loss day, and we have the opportunity to remember our friends who have lost their babies too.

We all share a bond that none of us asked for, and really none of us want. However, we share it anyway. Our babies are being raised in the arms of Jesus. We will meet them one day, but until then, we will love each other, support each other, be there to cry with each other, and celebrate with each other when good things come along.

I love you my Angel baby xx