I married my high school sweetheart after being separated for 10 years (hooray for Facebook!) and have been married now for 4 years. My husband, Alex, was active duty military for the first 3 years of our marriage and has served twice overseas. We found out we were pregnant with our first just 2 weeks before he was leaving on a 9 month deployment to Afghanistan. I had a picture-perfect pregnancy, with the exception that our little girl decided to sit breach all the way up until delivery. I am so grateful that my OB wrote letters to his commanding officer requesting special accommodations be made for Alex to come home early since we knew the date of delivery and that it would be a C-section. Alex made it home the Friday before we were scheduled to deliver on Wednesday. On September 18, 2013, we arrived at the hospital and found out in pre-op that our sweet Kaitlyn Sophia had gone on to be with Jesus.

Hope boxes were not in the hospital I delivered at, and it was about 6 weeks later as I was sifting through all of my Facebook messages that a friend’s wife had offered to sponsor a Hope Box for me. It was the hope box, that contained a sweet note from a fellow hope mom who had also lost her baby full-term, that connected me with the Hope Mommies ministry. When I finally got plugged in with the Facebook group, the leadership team had just announced the retreat for 2014. I debated  about going because I had been to some of the local grief groups and some of the moms just seemed… stuck.

They were hopeless. They weren’t focused on Christ and I was concerned about surrounding myself by moms like that so early in my grief. Luckily, my husband was very supportive of me going and one of the leaders wrote a very timely blog post about praying over some of the mugs that would be given out at the retreat that really sealed the deal with me attending.

I am eternally grateful to the leadership at Hope Mommies for putting on that retreat. I met some of the most amazing moms, one was my roommate and the other was just another Dallas girl. The three of us ended up getting pregnant at the same time, after losing all of our first borns within 2 months of each other, and we had each other to lean on when walking through pregnancy after grief. Our second babies were all born within 3 weeks of each other, and we supported each other through early momma hood like sisters. I am passionate about connecting new hope moms with our support system because our group has always helped me keep my eyes on Jesus and given me friends here that just “get it”. I hope that this fall’s group will become as close as I did with some of the girls from retreat.

Now, I am honored to serve as the president of the Dallas chapter of Hope Mommies. We are putting on the first annual 5k race in October, and I am excited to lead the fall session of a Hope group. I also work full-time for a cardiac division of Johnson and Johnson, am a dedicated Crossfit wife, and momma to our second born, Kiera Paige.