IMO, this is not practical. As far as Word and vba are concerned, when you press the Enter key you end one paragraph and start on the next. Word does not care whether you type anything first; it is a paragraph.

If you want, you could develop a count of empty paragraphs as an extra step and then subtract it from the total that Word sees.

My preference would be to use styles with inter-paragraph spacing set the way you want and not have the blank paragraphs. Empty paragraphs add to both the size and the complexity of a document.