By Anna Edwards Twenty-two years after the in-utero death of her daughter, author Jenny Haust of Baldwinsville, released a book examining her personal story of loss and sorrow through time. The book, “Hear My Heartbeat: The Story of Enduring Love,” describes Haust’s time living through and trying to understand her pain. She said she sees the book as an acknowledgment of her daughter and an opportunity to speak openly about something that she often didn’t feel comfortable bringing up before. “I felt like my daughter was kind of a secret and that didn’t feel right to me. It made me feel very guilty. So I wanted this acknowledgment of her, that she existed and she was important,” she said. Haust said that the death of her daughter wasn’t something that she talked about a lot because it made people uncomfortable. Once she was able to share her story, she felt relieved. “Now I feel so much lighter and I’m so much more joyful,” she said. Haust believes her book can help women going through similar experiences to process and be able to communicate about their loss. “I felt a great need to write this book to bring this subject to the forefront, because I do believe there are a lot of women out there that have experienced this type of loss, or any loss in general, and I think it’s important to speak openly about it and help other women know that they’re not alone,” she said. She also hopes that her book will lead to conversations about loss and struggle. “I wish somebody could have shared this kind of story and I knew about it when this happened to me,” she said. Haust said her book could potentially be helpful for those supporting someone who is going through an experience like hers. She said that, in her experience, people often said nothing because they didn’t know what to say. “Back when this happened to me, there wasn’t really an outlet or a place to really talk about this type of loss, and so my journey was very lonely… I felt like I really didn’t have anybody to talk to,” she said. “If you have something difficult that you’re really holding onto, talking about it makes such a big difference. It just does. It’s very freeing.” The author wants people in similar situations to know that, even though the pain will always be there, they will be able to move forward. “You always have to have hope, and you have to always take control of the situation and just keep moving forward. For me, I didn’t know why this happened, but I took control of it,” she said. Haust did all the research she could after the death of her daughter. Through testing, she found out that she had contracted Coxsackievirus and passed it on to her child. Coxsackievirus is extremely dangerous for women carrying a child in utero and doctors believe that it was the cause of her daughter’s death. Haust also worked to build up her mental fortitude and ensure that she was in the best place possible when having children in the future. She is now the mother of two college-age sons. She started writing her book in 2010 but realized that she wasn’t ready to relive her experience. She shelved the book for about 12 years and decided in 2022 that it was time to keep writing. She would designate certain days for writing and would sit in the Baldwinsville Public Library working on her book. Haust worked with the help of Linda Loomis, a contributing writer for Syracuse.com, who she would meet with every few weeks to aid the writing process. “I set goals that I wanted to have this completed and published by Thanksgiving of 2024. That was my goal, and I was laser-focused on it,” Haust said. Haust released her book on Nov. 21, a month before the anniversary of her daughter’s birthday.