Finding Support

Before Lauren was born, the only experience I had with babies was with my younger siblings or babysitting.  I worked right up until a few days before she arrived and then the hubby and I decided that I would be a stay-at-home mom.  Economically, it made sense, since almost all of my salary would have gone to daycare. Those first couple of months were kind of a blur, as it is with newborns.  Once she got a little older, I knew she and I both needed some outside stimulation.  I decided to take a parenting class close by hoping to meet new moms like myself.  Luckily, I did. I met a handful of moms and we all had babies pretty close in age to each other.  We started a playgroup that met at least once a week until the kids starting going to preschool. I lost touch briefly with those moms, but Facebook brought us back together again.  Now, instead of talking about diapers, we talk about what colleges our "babies" will be going to! I can remember back to when I had my first miscarriage.  I was devastated, upset and felt very much alone.  I found out about a support group a woman was running nearby and called her to get more information.  I chatted a little while and then realized the group probably wasn't a good fit for me. I instead talked a lot about it to a friend of mine at the time who had also had a miscarriage. I think she got tired of me talking about it all the time, because one day, out of the blue, she said something like, "it's a sad thing, but you really need to try and move on!!" When I had my second miscarriage, I dealt with it slightly better, but I wished I would have had a group to turn to that knew exactly what I was going through. With the explosion of social media, there are many ways that you can find support. I have found some amazing blogs written by parents of special needs. I tend to be drawn to the blogs that are inspirational and focus on the positives.  I comment on their posts from time-to-time, but mostly I just like to read them.  The first definition of support that pops up on dictionary.com is "to bear or hold up." When my uncle who lived on the East Coast was very ill, I would post updates on Facebook.  When he passed away at the beginning of February, and I was unable to attend his funeral because of the bad weather and my flight being cancelled, I was completely devastated.  Many of my online "buddies" comforted me and "held me up" through that difficult time and it brought me an enormous amount of peace. Sometimes, when I post something new Dominic is doing, I wonder if my friends and family think it's too much - I don't want to clog up their "Newsfeeds!!"  I hope when you need support for whatever is going on in your life, you are able to "find" it.  If have already "found" it, then you know how awesome it can be!