“It wasn’t meant to be this way. But Mama, please remember…although this world is upside down, you are the world to them. What I would give to sit in solace with you.”
‘This isn’t the introduction to motherhood you expected. Even though I have not been able to see you, I see you.’: Woman urges ‘you are loved, you are enough’ to new moms during pandemic
‘I was told recently that I had ‘let myself go.’ I gave birth 18 months ago. My body is not an apology.’: Mom responds to body shamers, ‘Wear the sweatpants and the yoga pants and let yourself go!’
“I’ve gained some weight, my eyebrows are shaggy, and I’ve got a couple of chin hairs. And I won’t apologize for it.”
‘I told her, ‘I love you,’ for the last time. We thought we were prepared. I couldn’t get out of bed for 2 days.’: Mom feels grief and joy for foster kids, ‘Our definition of family has changed for the better’
“Our teen stayed for a few months with her son. Just enough time for me to get used to make-up all over the counter. When she left, I started leaving my eyeshadow out just so it felt like she was still here.
‘My 15-year-old asked, ‘Mom, can I get a tattoo?’ I let her and no, I don’t care what anybody has to say about it.’: Mom says daughter ‘earned’ tattoo, ‘She showed me what surviving looks like’
“At 13, she had watched her dad’s throat gurgle. He stopped breathing. She didn’t have to watch, but she sat straight up, wiped her face, and squeezed his hand. ‘You can go now. It’s okay.’ Even with that reasoning, I still struggled with it.”
‘She was a ticking time bomb. ’Was this my fault? It could be the last time we’d see her.’: 4-month-old with Williams Syndrome survives open heart surgery, ‘She is our perfect daughter’
“I still had the ‘it won’t happen to me’ mentality. When I saw the cardiologist’s number pop up on the phone, I started sweating. For 10 hours, my husband and I sat in the parking garage of the hospital, crying.”
‘This is not just about me. HIS BABY DIED, TOO.’ They dismiss or ignore his grief.’: Woman reminds us dads also need support after losing child, ‘He, too, needs to heal’
“Martin lost the opportunity to teach Sage how to lace a glove or how to properly stand at home plate. Everything he could have done with Sage, or for Sage. He lost all of that.”
‘My body failed me. Betrayed me in the worst way. I wanted it to be a mistake.’: Woman’s first pregnancy results in miscarriage, ‘I’m not going to give up on becoming a mom’
“My husband and I needed to be together, but not at home. Not at the home where we were going to raise our first child together. Where we had the room picked out for the nursery. The home that had every ultrasound image plastered on the fridge.”
‘The nurse said, ‘This poor baby just needs something to eat!’ I knew there was something else going on.’: Woman loses preemie daughter to infection, ‘We have continued to celebrate our girl’
“They had to poke her AGAIN for more blood because they must have mixed up her blood with someone else’s. ‘That couldn’t have been hers,’ the doctor said, ‘she’s not that sick.’ The blood tests came back with the same terrifying results. Our girl was very sick.”
‘His heart kept stopping. It was as though I was adrift at sea, waiting for a life vest.’: Mom births baby with Down syndrome who has open heart surgery, ‘I’ll spend the rest of my life shouting his worth from the rooftops’
“The first 36 hours of my son’s life were some of the worst of mine. I wanted to turn back the clock and return back to my normal life. In that hospital room, it felt as though nothing would ever feel normal again.”
’I woke up hanging from my seat belt. ‘Can you move your legs?’ They hung like dead meat.’: Woman paralyzed from car accident, ‘My mind, soul, and spirit remained untouched’
“My last thought before losing consciousness was that I had killed the car full of people, and those people were my family.”