Guest Author - Krissi Danielsson

Five years ago when I was going through my own horrible experience with recurrent miscarriages, there weren’t nearly enough good information and support sites out there. I am so glad to see that this is slowly changing. More and more, pregnancy loss is becoming something that people are willing to talk about and less of a taboo subject. The Internet is largely responsible for this and I’m seeing a lot of new good sites popping up. So I think I’ll start running a “site of the month” series to highlight some of them.

One site I found today is called Born Angels. Born Angels is a loss support site for those who have had miscarriages and neonatal losses. It offers several different resources including a message board, poems, tribute writings, and more.

The message board appears not to be too heavily trafficked, but does have a few active forums. One of my favorite aspects of the site is its support center. This page of the site offers first a letter to readers offering condolences on their losses, then follows with some suggestions for what grieving moms can do for themselves, suggestions for friends and relatives who might be looking for how to comfort a loved one, and a touching poem that describes the feelings of loss.

More poems are available on the link for poetry, which offers a collection of over a half dozen poems written by grieving parents and a link for more poetry sites. Poignant writings are available also in the written tributes forum of the message board, although only a handful of tributes were submitted there at the time of this writing.

The site includes a page that sheds light on a subject not often talked about, which is postpartum depression that follows loss. Depression after a loss might seem like it’s a given for anyone who loses a desired baby, but pregnancy loss can also be compounded and made worse by the hormonal process that accompanies the biological aspect of pregnancy loss. This page includes an article written by a social worker about how it’s okay to grieve a loss and offering some suggestions of what women can do to get through the depression.

Memorial keepsakes are suggested on another page, as are a selection of books about miscarriage and pregnancy loss. Another page offers personal statements from the creators of the site.

Born Angels is not a new site and in fact has been around for a while, but I only came across it recently and it seemed like a great site to use for the first installment of this new series. Be sure to check it out!