By Charlotte Hilton Andersen, REDBOOK
Miscarrying a baby at 17 weeks isn't terribly common. When all your friends (and the 16-year-old at the mall) are seemingly pregnant or bouncing bubbly newborns, losing a wanted baby can make you feel alone in a world of Huggies commercials and stroller parks. Of course, not everyone had a new child or one on the way. To my grieving mind, I was like the kid on The Sixth Sense, except instead of seeing dead people, I saw pregnant ladies.
In the ecstasy of new pregnancy, I'd eagerly signed up for a local group for expectant mothers. Together, we had morning sickness, tossed around baby names, and read up on which piece of fruit our baby resembled this week. And, of course, we had due dates within a month of each other. Until we didn't. When my husband and I found out our baby had suddenly stopped developing, the hospital sent us home to wait for "nature to take its course." My new friends could not relate; they treated me like I'd caught a contagious disease. The silence was deafening. I didn't blame them at all, but I was scared and lonely.
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After an Internet search, I discovered through a popular blog for mothers an online support group for women trying to have a baby after a miscarriage. While our circumstances were all different, suddenly I had found a group of women who could truly say, "I know how you feel." At last, I no longer felt weird. And when our next baby-a little girl-was stillborn, those same women became my lifeline, my one link to sanity as I clawed my way out of a well of grief. I'd never met any of them in real life, but I felt closer to them than most of my real-life friends. They sent flowers, cards, and gifts to the funeral, but most importantly they listened to me. They weren't afraid of my tragedy, because they'd each lived their own.
Cattiness, gossip, bullying, unrealistic expectations-much has been said about negative effects of mommy blogs. But from telling me about a sale on diapers to helping me figure out what to make for dinner to making me feel normal when I decide there is no such thing as "work-life balance", when you're a mom, so much more needs to be said about the good.
Big or little, how has the Internet helped you be a better mom?
Charlotte Hilton Andersen is a mom of 5 and the author of the book The Great Fitness Experiment: One Year of Trying Everything and the blog of the same name.
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