About Jen

Hey Friend! Thanks so much for stopping by!

First things first, my name is Jennifer but I only hear that when I’m in trouble, so call me Jen, Jenny, or JMo.  And if you want to know a fun fact, my maiden name is Loewe so I went by JLo for years.

I’m an Athletic Trainer turned Grief & Wellness Coach following the birth and death of our firstborn, Matthew.

 

 

Here's our story:

We went for a routine appointment at 12 weeks, you know the "meet your baby" appointment, and ended up learning that he had multiple fetal anomalies that led to a very poor prognosis and little chance of life outside the womb. When I talk about anomalies, I’m not talking minor either…think deformities head to {non-existent} toes – from his sweet little face to internal structures, brain, organs, and all 4 limbs affected.

We were told to prepare for a miscarriage or a stillbirth, and were given two options: abort or carry a child that would die.  *What parents should ever be faced with such a choice?!

I could not get to a point of peace with ending his life so we chose to carry and keep him with us as long as time would allow.

Matthew beat the odds to a certain extent!  In December 2017, at 34.5 weeks, our little boy was born ALIVE, and lived snuggled in our arms for 2 hours before peacefully going to be with Jesus.  It was almost as if he was determined to meet us, unwilling to leave this earth without seeing his parent’s faces.

We cuddled him as long as we could that night, until finally we called the nurse in and said our final goodbyes.  I remember every minute of that day and as I reflect back on it, I still don’t know how we made it through.  Jesus is the only explanation.

Our world was forever changed! While our hearts remain heavy from his absence , we are rejoicing that our sweet boy is healthy and whole, completely perfect, lacking nothing, and running around heaven without a care in the world. We can’t wait to hug his neck and I am going to completely embarrass the kid with so many kisses in front of all his friends when we get there!

 

We didn’t get pregnant again until October of 2018, which felt like the longest.wait.ever. 

Once again, we headed to the doctor, hesitant but optimistic for our rainbow baby.  It wasn’t long into that appointment that things didn’t seem to be going well either.  I’ll save the play by play and suffice it to say at 8 weeks we found out our second baby wouldn’t make it either and to expect a miscarriage.  This was, by the way, the week before Christmas, felt like a punch to the gut, and cosmically unfair.  Hearts broken as we had planned to tell our families over the holidays, our grief compounded on our already devastating loss.  The miscarriage process took an entire month, ultimately ending with a D&C in mid January 2019.

 

After another 9 months struggling to get pregnant, I'd finally had it – I couldn’t keep trying and hoping, and dealing with the rollercoaster of hope deferred each month.  And I certainly didn’t feel equipped for another loss.  We either needed to get pregnant or be done, so we sought the help of a fertility doctor in early October 2019.  She ran her own myriad of tests - again, revealing nothing, no reason for the struggles.  And while an outsider might find that comforting, going through it sort of just made me feel like, well then WHY?!  Why all this heartache without cause?  What the actual F, you know what I mean???

But, thankfully, she started me on a round of Chlomid which worked like magic and a few weeks later we got our first confirmation that our rainbow baby was on the way.  “I hope this one sticks” was all I could muster as I hugged my husband with tears in my eyes and that pee stick still in my hands.

Well, it did stick!  And we welcomed our beautiful baby girl, Sienna Avery, into the world in June of 2020!  She is perfection!  The light of our life!  And reminds us everyday of the miracle of life, just how many things had to go perfectly right for any of us to make it here.  I am in awe of her daily!

She is in no way a replacement for Matthew, rather her own unique ray of sunshine in our lives and I am committed to making sure she knows her brother.

I want to highlight here that my healing did not happen because we got our rainbow baby, instead my healing happened because I did the hard work of actually processing the trauma of losing our child.

We have since experienced another early miscarriage of a baby that was so loved, and who we were so excited to welcome to our family.  Cue another grief cycle.

So, I'm no stranger to grief and loss {on repeat} and just know that ya girl here, gets ya and nothing you can say about any of the emotions you're experiencing will ever surprise me...because I've been through them all!

 

I have a unique appreciation for motherhood because of Matthew.  He has made me a better, more tolerant, albeit more worried, mom.  I am not perfect by any means but I take no moment for granted because of him.  He’s given me the ability to slow down, soak up the little moments that you wish could last forever, and recognize what’s actually important as I parent his sister.  I am a different person because of him.

Trust me when I tell you, if I could write our story any other way, I would.  I would give anything to have Matthew (and our other babies) here, but as I live his (and their) legacy I continually discover purpose in my pain and direction for my life’s work.

I’m not quite sure when it happened but one day I realized I had been chosen to tell this story, hand-picked by God as more than enough to share a message of pain and triumph, death and redemption, desperation and hope.  Somewhere along the way I learned to live well after loss, as Matthew lives on in me.

 

And that brings me here...

As I discovered the value of sitting in what I was feeling until I understood it deeply enough that I could move forward, I became a voice in the loss community.

I discovered the valuable role grief plays in life after loss, and that it is not to be rushed.  And, I became an advocate for not slapping on a fake smile and pretending you're ok just because it makes others feel more comfortable than knowing the actual depths of the pain you're in.

The journey is long, it's hard.  You'll want to give up a million times along the way.  But I'm here to walk you through it, to process rather than stuff the emotions, to heal.

 

Today, I can truly say life is good, it is well with my soul...but it wasn't always like that and my passion is to help you do the journey in a healthy way, to grieve well so you can live well and ultimately thrive after your loss.  It's my heart project, Matthew's gift to the world.  His legacy.  And I, as his mom, get the honor of delivering it to you.

 

*TFMR Mommas, are you welcome here!  I have nothing but love and respect for you.  You were faced with an impossible choice and you made the best decision you could, at the time, with the information you had in front of you.  My decision was not of any more noble nature than yours, our end results are the same, we just took different paths there.  It's all agony.  We are both enduring life after loss of a loved baby.  You belong here!