BabyFit

Today, Jon suggested that I write about the other website I’ve been posting on for years: “BabyFit.com”:http://babyfit.com. It is surprising that I haven’t thought about writing about this website, but it has become such a regular part of my life that it didn’t occur to me!

BabyFit.com is dedicated to providing tools, information, and community resources to pregnant women who wish to remain fit during their pregnancy through healthy diet and regular exercise. I joined BabyFit in Sept 2004 — I had just lost 35 lbs on Weight Watchers, and just gotten a positive pregnancy test, and I wanted to make sure my newfound habits of diet and exercise stuck throughout the pregnancy. Unfortunately, that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, but not before I had developed a true bond with some of the other women due in the same month as me.

After our second miscarriage in March 2005, I was really feeling the need to talk with other women who experienced these struggles. I communicated with the BabyFit administrators, and it turns out that I was asking just at the right time — they were about to redesign the website. A week or so later, a community for those in the “preconception” phase was born. At the same time, the site became free (previously, it cost $20/year to join) — this made the community much larger, but the narrower categories for discussion preserved the sense of small-community on various topics.

I have been posting and communicating with women in the “preconception” forum ever since. We have been through a lot together — they were extremely supportive of me through our third miscarriage and throughout the anxiety-filled first trimester of this pregnancy. Other women who have suffered multiple miscarriages are now pregnant, some have had babies already, and we all continue to cheer on those who are TTC (Trying To Conceive). We pray for each other, send each other gifts, and have met each other on occasion. (I met one of these women this past December, and it turns out we were at InterVarsity’s “School of Leadership Training”:http://www.intervarsity.org/cedar/info.php?id=2013 in the same year — 1996. Such a small world!)

It turns out that I never really used the nutrition and exercise tools on the site as much as I planned to originally (don’t ask how much weight I’ve gained!). But the community has kept me really connected. I feel so grateful for these women and all the support we’ve been able to give to one another through this emotionally-intense stage of our lives.