I met Cory on my babyloss journey pretty early on. Our stories and timelines followed a similar track- as you can read in her intro.  Amazing that you can meet and connect with people across the country and find comfort in each others emails and conversations without even knowing anything about their day-to-day lives and personalities. After more than a year of communicating through email, we finally became facebook friends and a whole world of Cory’s quirkiness was revealed to me… and I was psyched about it. 🙂

Here is her intro, in her own words, with a picture to give you a hint of things to come!! I am giddy anticipating her Muchness pics!

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I feel like I am telling you the same story you have heard several times before; I am a Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) babyloss mom.  My story is sad, and hard, and long.  I had really intended to sit down and write it all out as my 30-days introduction but now that I am here I don’t really want to.  I don’t want TTTS to define me and I want you to understand a little bit more about me.  So, here is the readers digest version of things.

I have a beautiful, funny, smart little boy.  I got pregnant almost on accident (who needs that pesky birth control) and my pregnancy was boring.  I didn’t think so at the time, of course, but my first pregnancy was without a single complication.  I always knew that I wanted my kids close together so when the “duder” was a little over a year my husband and I decided to have another baby.  I got pregnant the first month I was off the pill.  (Turns out that I can get knocked up in the blink of an eye; it’s keeping that baby that is tricky.)

This is when the story starts getting harder.  I miscarried that baby in June.  We waited a month at my doctor’s direction and got pregnant in August.  My first early ultrasound was at 8 weeks.

Sidebar: I do this thing where I think of the worst-case scenario when I am faced with something hard.  It’s a bit morbid but I figure that if I can deal with the worst thing I can think of then everything else is something I can handle.

As I drove to the doctor’s office for that first ultrasound I went through every scenario I could think of to help me deal with the stress; Worst-case – no heartbeat.  Best-case – healthy heartbeat.  Well geez Cory, it could be twins…hahaha!  Yep, it was twins.  Identical twin girls!

I was diagnosed with TTTS in November.  I lost them January 13, 2010 at 22 weeks 3 days.  I labored and delivered them as if I was going to be able to take them home.  There is nothing more heartbreaking then waiting for a baby to cry and hearing nothing.  I held them for only a few minutes and had them cremated.  Their remains are still at the funeral home.

Yep.  Even those short sentences and the fastest possible telling of that story made me cry.  There is so much more but I am sure it will come out over the next 30 days.  How can it not?  Nov 2010 is when I started to lose my muchness.  And you know what?  I was much muchier before!  I am not one of those girls who stays home and sits on her couch all the time. But I certainly became that girl.  I am not one of those girls who cries herself to sleep and has flashbacks of early labor.  But then I was.

I got pregnant with my now 5 month old daughter in April 2011, 4 long, exhausting, emotional months after I lost the girls. She is beautiful and sweet and fun and a big part of finding my muchness again.  She was born in January.  Now that month is so full of emotion that I should just declare it a disaster and stay home for the whole month!

After she was born I decided (with the help a wonderful gal we all know and love) to get this train back on the tracks.  I am taking on new challenges and adventures and learning new things.  I am laughing and crying and finding myself again.  And it turns out there is much more much than I remembered!  I think I am supposed to have a Muchness theme but I think I will just keep you guessing.  I will tell you that there are fishnet tights involved! I say I am having a mid-life crisis but I am really having more of a mid-life party!