“It was 2 a.m. I needed to pee. I got out of the bed and knew something wasn’t right. I sat down on the toilet and I felt it. It slipped right out. I didn’t want to look. I knew what had just happened. I had to look. I reached down and picked my baby up out of the water. I panicked.”
“I cry. I WEEP into my cold coffee. The mom guilt consumes me and I feel like I’m failing my kids. I was also unaware that hemorrhoids can last for months at a time. I’m scared.”
“I saw your knuckles turn white on that stroller handle bar. I saw you look down on your baby while it was starting to stir. ‘Please don’t cry,’ you whispered.”
“Our goal for that final month was to help him walk longer distances and get his strength up so that he could be at the birth. Even though he was sick and I knew that him dying was a possibility, I never thought it would actually happen.”
“I threw her on speaker and texted Ben 50 times in 2 minutes. ‘ANSWER YOUR PHONE! ADOPTION CALL!’ We nervously, softly knocked on the door. She got up, kissing him, and we all started to cry. I tried to stay strong as she sobbed in my arms. It was time for us to go. We had to push our son out of the room and down the hall, away from her. I lost it.”
“One morning, Ellie woke up in extreme pain. We rushed to the ER. The MRI would give us news that would completely devastate our family. It never gets easier to watch her in pain when all you want to do, in your job as a mom, is take their pain away.”
“Would he have said that had I been a man? Or had my daughter and husband with me? I don’t know. But women deal with these attitudes and behavior more than men, that I do know. And I. Am. Over. It.”
“On a rushed morning, I threw her a tank top and asked her to get dressed. She quietly asked me for a different shirt. Oblivious and in a hurry, I said, ‘Why? You love that one. Just put it on, we gotta go.’ Tears formed in her eyes.”
“I once had a girl tell me that my dress would look better if I had some Spanx on – I had a cesarean 3 three months prior to that. I loved the way I looked in that dress.”
“We never heard or saw a heartbeat. I didn’t carry him home with tiger-striped stretch marks covering my belly. I didn’t come home swollen or bloody. And there he laid at just 4-hours old, 5lbs 13 oz. A blonde-haired boy with the sweetest old man face. Our little Lane Everett. I didn’t bear the scars that childbirth brings, but they sure were there on my heart.”
