I need to let off some steam, and I hope you'll all indulge me.
I registered for MN only last week because I was really worried that I was going round the bend, blubbing my eyes out, after hearing about Baby P's death, and was desperate to find out if other bereaved mothers were reacting in a similar way.
The baby loss forum I usually log in to seems to be leeching members (I think many of them are now talking via a Facebook group), and I didn't want to start a thread there because I've started to feel like I am the only person who ever says anything remotely 'political'. People want to talk about themselves but not about the state of neonatal services or why the state pays three blondes in a boat to win gold at the Olympics but expects the public to dig deep to pay to rebuild the crumbling Save the Baby Unit at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.
I found that baby loss forum after I abandoned the forum run by BLISS, the premature baby charity. They have a bereavement thread but most of the people who visit it took home their babies and are, in my view, voyeurs. Well intentioned perhaps, but still voyeurs. But when a post was started by someone who had had a miscarriage at 6 weeks and people jumped in to say it's just the same as losing a baby you gave birth to, I decided it was time to move on and clearly so did many others as that bereavement forum has pretty much ground to a halt. No medical text book says an early miscarriage is the same as a neonatal death, nor does the law, but you could not say so on a message board without risking appearing to be a real cow.
Now, on MN, I find intelligent women, but also some really harsh posts and people who have no reason to be on a bereavement thread desperately trying to justify themselves. I'm really sorry MN pulled you V, and it must have been very upsetting. I really think you were provoked and that they should simply have emailed you. You are in a very unusual position in having lost 2 children and I think MN should have been more sensitive to the effect of provocative posts on you.
And it just makes me want to scream - where can you find an intellifgently run website where you can talk to intelligent women about the loss of a child?
This site has many, many topics but leaves talk of baby and child loss to just one thread! It doesn't make me feel that MN is really the place for me either. Seems they'd much rather we didn't come here upsetting or provoking other people.
Perhaps I just have to give up on the Net. I don't know. I just needed to vent my frustration, and I hope nobody minds me using this space to do so.
best wishes,
K