Visit "JoAnn's Diary" to read her other entries during a year's time frame.

Although I have a darling 3 year old son, Dallin yesterday - being Mothers Day was the most painful Mother's Day I have ever experienced. But you are so right in what you say about our lost babies giving us "gifts". I found JoAnn Walter from your group on the internet Mothers Day morning, emailed her from NZ and couldn't believe that finally someone from the internet had responded to me the same day. And on Mothers Day - JoAnn's first one after the loss of her precious Ian. How incredible!

I feel my baby daughter, Rose has now just given me a gift of a special friendship!

I am sure many of you can appreciate the pain I'm going through so soon after my loss. Sadly, we do not seem to have any support groups here so if any of you would like to share your story with me directly, I would welcome the opportunity to communicate with you. Who knows, if one day we start discussing our countries, I may be able to encourage you to visit our lovely country!

Meanwhile, I'd like to share with you all a special tribute to Rose which I read at her funeral service which my husband and I compiled and led (it was one of the few parental things we could do for our little darling).

I sincerely hope this tribute gives many of you some inner peace. From a mother in New Zealand - Fiona Hebditch

This was a very wanted baby. A very loved baby. We had tried for 4 years to conceive. What a delight when our Dr. told me on April 16th that we were going to have a baby!

But joy turned to sorrow on May 28th, when at 10 weeks, I began to bleed and cramp. I felt like my body had betrayed me. Why couldn't I protect the baby that I loved?

Was rushed to the hospital because I had lost so much blood. An emergency D & C was preformed. My womb that once held new life was now empty along with my arms.

I was placed in post-partum to recover. I heard babies crying. I even had a nurse ask me if I wanted to feed my baby. This was pouring salt into my wounded heart.

It has been 2 weeks...sometimes it feels like 2 years, and sometimes it feels like 2 minutes.

I wrote her a poem...I miss her so much.

I came across a picture the other day of me, seven months pregnant. I couldn't believe how much it hurt to see myself like that again!

I seriously stared and stared at the picture, not really recognizing the woman in it to be me. My world has been turned upside down since the death of my child. The woman in the picture is like a stranger, yet, I KNOW IT IS ME! It's as if I am seeing Hope when she was alive, and INSIDE of me!

I loved being pregnant! I hate it so much that not only am I not, but that my baby isn't even here! I've tried to express these feelings in the following poem:

I just wanted to share this poem with you in time for Mother's Day. It says what's in my heart! I wish you all a very Happy Mother's Day, and know that each of you will take a little time this Sunday to remember all of our friends and so many others that have a hard time on this day because they are a Mother who's precious baby's not with them.

Please let me relate this rather long story. I can remember it today as if it only happened yesterday.

>My sister called up to visit us - we lived about a mile from each other and my sister and my wife are as close as REAL sisters and not sisters-in-law. I was ushered into the sitting room while my sister and Maureen, my wife, discussed womens' things.

Why we men are not allowed to eavesdrop on these conversations has always puzzled me. Anyway, I knew better than to question either of them. My sister did seem to be somewhat upset and I thought she might be wanting a lift somewhere or maybe she was going to ask if we'd look after her dog for a few days. I thought of everything but the real thing.

After about fifteen minutes Maureen came into the sitting room and quitely told me that our niece, my sister's daughter, had lost the baby she had been carrying.

I was quite upset as I always liked my niece a great deal and knew she was looking forward to having this little baby.

My wife said that she and my sister were going down to my sister's house and that they would be back soon.

They did indeed return within half an hour and they had our niece with them. I was quite surprised as I was of the opinion that she should be in hospital. (What do we men know?!)

I called Maureen to one side and said "I thought you said Eleanor (our niece) had lost the baby". This was because, looking at her she still appeared extremely 'pregnant'. Maureen explained to me that the little baby had died inside of our niece. She further explained that our niece would have to be taken into hospital at some future date where she would be induced to deliver her 'dead' baby. This was really too much for me.

I could not undersdtand how a woman could bear that amount of pain, that excess of diappointment, that torture of having to go into a hospital, occupy a bed adjacent to other women who unlike you, would give birth to a baby while you would go through pain and heartache to deliver something that God had taken from you.

These thoughts stayed with me for quite some time after that day. No matter what I did, I could not get them out of my mind. When this has happened to me before I always found that once I put what I am feeling on to paper, the pain eases and eventually goes away altogether. That was how I came to write this little poem.

I imagined that I was my niece and that I had lost this little baby. I hope you don't find my little poem offensive.