Who am I?
My name is Heather, and I am from Detroit, Michigan. I will be 22 years old this January, and I am 8 months pregnant with my first child. I grew up with both my parents and my two younger brothers, the youngest of which is special needs. We did not have the "cool things" while growing up, but both of my parents worked very hard to make sure we always had a place to live and something to eat. As most people know the economy here in Michigan is horrible right now. Some people are feeling it more than others, but no matter who you are you can stop but noticing a different business closing each day. My family was hit pretty hard with the fallen economy. My mother was one of the many that received a permanent layoff from her full time job at the Detroit News Paper. I also lost my job as a restaurant supervisor due to the restaurant having to close. The restaurant lost too much business due to local Ford Motor Company layoffs, and it forced us into extinction. Since both of us lost our jobs we started having problems with house payments and utilities. My father was barely making enough to cover bills let alone provide food for us as well. My mother and I have still not found a steady job, and it's been over a year and a half. So many people lost their jobs up here it is near impossible to even get a job at McDonalds due to all of the extremely over qualified people applying. My boyfriend and the father of my son also lost his roofing job a little over 7 months ago, and like everyone else in this state he is having a hell of a time trying to find a job. All three of us have been apply everywhere praying for anything. In the meantime, we have been doing odd jobs as we find them (like craigslist odd jobs). It doesn't help very much, but it is better than nothing at all.Why did I start Save Baby Jayden?
My boyfriend and I, along with my family, have finally hit a brick wall. After a year of trying to refinance our house and trying to get our mortgage company to work with us, our house is now under foreclosure. Come April 2011 we have to be out. On top of all of this my boyfriend is struggling to stay out of jail due to fines and costs of his probation and court dates. In October of last year he was caught attempting to steal $12.00 worth of food from Meijer. Attempting, as in, he didn't even step foot out of the store with it. He was "attempting" to steal the food, because quite frankly we didn't have any money to buy any food and after 4 days of not eating I believe anyone would do the same thing. Anyways, that has now costed us about $700 maybe $800 dollars now. The best part is we still owe them another 6 or $700.00. Mind you we had to sell basically everything we owned that was worth any value at all to come up with this money, as well as, doing odd jobs for friends, family, and a few craigslist users.As of right now, we are completely out of things to sell and we can't even find someone willing to pay us for doing anything for them. My boyfriend has now been violated on his probation for the third time, because we failed to come up with the rest of the money he owes. Now he is going to end up in jail, and we are both praying that the baby is born before they take him away.
Today I broke down. I lost all hope and realized this is the end of the line. Neither my boyfriend or myself have a job, within the next 30 days I am having a child, and in 4 months we are not going to have a place to live. I really don't know if anyone will actually take this blog seriously, but I honestly don't know what else to do. All I can do right now is tell my story, and pray to God that someone will hear me out and try to help us.
What is the goal I want to reach with Save Baby Jayden?
I want to be heard for once, and I am hoping that somebody who can afford to help will try. Even if people donate 50 cents at least I know that people care and they realize that their our people out there that are struggling right now.If I could just raise up enough money to pay off my boyfriends fines so he will be able to be there when his son is born and be there for his first few months I would be extremely happy. Even if someone from our area read this and offered us a job I would be thrilled.
I can only dream that we could raise enough money to help us into another place come the end of March 2011. I have never really tried to make one of these sites before so I don't know what to expect, but in a world of dreams I just wish this could make a difference in our lives, especially my sons.
