I am very sad today...

I am very sad today because I have just received some very very very sad news. But first... a bit of background information...

When I was pregnant with LJ I had joined two yahoo groups - one for babies that were going to be born in the month of March and one for babies that were going to be born in April because my due date was April 1st. Through our pregnancy we all got to know one another. We would all post stories, worries, concerns, questions and of course pictures. One by one as we each had our babies we would post our birth stories - the good, the bad, and of course the beautiful.

Then after our babies were born our relationships stayed strong as some struggled with breastfeeding... others struggled with lactose intolerance... then teething issues... and of course diaper rash... you know, regular baby stuff. Each member was ready to lend a remedy or story with "what I did when my baby did that was ____". And did I mention the pictures?

As our babies got older and older the posts to our group got smaller and smaller but it was still alive. I would say there were 3 main Mommies that kept our group strong while the rest of us would lurk.

One of those Mommies was Niki. After 5 years of "trying" she was blessed with Cate. After Cate turned about 1ish she and her husband decided that if it was going to take another 5 years to get pregnant again that they better start trying... well their prayers were answered and they became pregnant within 6 months and baby Maxx was born this past February. I hung on to getting the daily posts from this group to find out about Niki and her new baby and then I turned off the daily posts and would just check in here and there on the internet.

This morning when I logged in to Yahoo I saw that I had a lot of messages in my inbox. Funny... I don't use that email address for anything... so curiously I clicked on it and there were about 7 messages from my Mommies group... so I figured that yahoo had done some messing around and I'd have go go back into my membership and re-check that I didn't want to receive individual messages when I happened to see Maxx's name... Baby Maxx had passed away on Saturday. SIDS.

I can't even begin to imagine Niki's pain or what she and her family is going through right now. So, please... if you are reading this say a little prayer for Maxx, Niki and her family.