A friend in need

This post is for a friend.  I know that many of my followers may have started following me during my introduction into the world of IVF through my struggles and triumphs with infertility.  There is a closeness in this sisterhood that no one hoped to join that allows us to share things that other might not understand.  A lot of my early struggles were before I started blogging, and I was lucky to have a friend in real life who understood.  We met for coffee, laughed about some of the absurdities of fertility treatments, talked about shots and pills and SA reports, and bitched about people who got pregnant easily.  Do you have a friend like that?  For me, that person was Jen.  You may know her as Jennepper, as I consider her fairly "famous" in the blogging world, from her blog Maybe if You Just Relax.  I consider her daughter Olivia one of Ben and Maggie's best friends. 

It took 3 years for Jen to get her successful IVF cycle that ended with the birth of her beautiful daughter Olivia on Valentines Day just 2 months before my kids were born.  Last year, she again went through treatments to add to her family and wound up pregnant with identical twin girls.  She had a rough pregnancy where there were concerns about her Baby B (nicknamed Itty Bitty Baby) while her Baby A (Hog Baby) thrived in utero.  She ended up in the hospital towards the end, and received steroid shots with a planned c-section 48 hours later.  The night before her c-section Jen and her husband received the devastating news that they had lost their precious Baby A.  Beautiful baby Evelyn was born still and her sister Ainsley (Itty Bitty Baby) was equally beautiful but small and mighty and taken straight to the NICU. 

Ainsley has proven to be a fighter.  She has been in the NICU since the day she was born.  She has been through multiple surgeries including one on her spine, her heart, g-tube surgery and most recently a traecheotomy.  Her main issues seem to be eating and growing, and it may be months until she is home.  In the meantime, her family has been adjusting to a new kind of normal, including work, spending time with Olivia and traveling back and forth to the NICU to be with Ainsley.  A local group of moms had gotten together and organized help for her family as much as we could.  We have done meal delivery, collected money for gas and grocery gift cards, paid for their parking at the hospital (they do not offer free parking for NICU parents, even after 5 months of multiple trips a day!), etc.  As a small group we've done what we can but now we are reaching out to you, out here in the blogosphere. 

We are planning a local event in July that will help to raise funds to help with their medical and life expenses.  My friend Andrea and I were talking about how there are probably many people out there who know of Jen from her blog, or through friends who would not be able to attend our event, but might want to do something to help, so our Blog-raiser was started.  All of the details of both the event and what we are planning can be found on Andrea's page here. 

If you are a person like I am who hears a story like this and thinks "I wish there was something I could do" I am asking you to consider one of the following options to help us with our campaign. 

1. Write a short blurb to post to your blog about Jen and her family including the link to the information on Andreas page.  Let's get as many people as possible to post this information in their blogs to start the wave so we can reach as many as possible.  Also, feel free to share the link anywhere else you can "spam" for us. 
2. Click on the donate button on the sidebar of my blog and make a donation.  Please believe me when I say there is no amount too small! 
3. Copy the code for the button and add it to your own blog
4. Contribute anything you can think of to be raffled off at our benefit.  Be creative!  Offer up a skill (graphic design, blog banner, photoshop editing), coupons to your etsy store, or find any items you could mail in for our raffle baskets. 
5. And of course, if you are local, contact us about how you can get tickets to attend this event!  

No family should have to go through something like this.  No baby should be in the hospital for this long instead of at home.  No parent should have to experience loss and joy on the same day, and no one should have to travel this long road without support.  As a mother, I can't imagine her loss.  As a friend, I can't imagine her strength.  And as a part of this IF sisterhood?  I want to kick the universe in the teeth for heaping all this on someone who already had to fight battles to become a mother.