“She was my best friend, my go to for everything. Our dream was to go to the beach and have a cabana boy for the day. On her 60th birthday, I made our dream come true. Unfortunately, she couldn’t put her toes in the sand as she was in a wheelchair, but we had the perfect day, cabana boy and all.”
“From the moment we got around the corner, things felt off, eerie. As this man came closer, I realized something was very wrong. ‘You’re going to come with me and do what I say,’ he said, holding me. I would do whatever it took to keep my daughter safe. If I get a feeling, I listen.”
“After struggling for YEARS to have baby, we were going to have TWO! Our friends planned a gender reveal party for our biological baby and at the party, we also announced to everyone that a birth momma had chosen us to be parents to her baby. You should have seen everyone’s faces.”
“This expectant mom knew we were the right family for her baby. And so we leapt. She sent pictures of her ultrasound with sweet messages like, ‘That’s your baby in there.’ I let myself fall hard and fast. To say I was wearing my heart on my sleeve is an understatement. My heart was showing everywhere. It was an open target…free for the breaking.”
“The kids cry, fight. The toilet clogs again. I buy $200 of groceries for the week and we run out of milk. I can barely fit into my mom jeans because my gym time has been sabotaged by my kids. There are days where my children run wild and they don’t seem to care what I say or do. Then, there are days I just want to lie on the floor, listen to them breathe, and soak in their innocence.”
“I had just dropped my son off at college for the first time. The hostess smiled. ‘How many in your party?’ I stood there, stunned, as my heart jumped into my throat. There was awkward silence. I knew she was going to make me say it. ‘Three.'”
“To us, there was never a question. In room 117, he came into this world. Crying, alive, and doing it on his own! The doctors were wrong. Was he perfect? No, he was perfectly imperfect, and he was HERE. Alive, and a fighter.”
“I remember the phone call as clear as day. I was home, and our daughter was playing in her room. The phone rang. We were told that our baby did not have Down Syndrome. There was a ‘but’ at the end of the sentence. Then the tears came. Loud obnoxious tears. I hung up the phone and cried as hard as I ever have. She wasn’t going to live.”
“‘We’re going to die, oh we’re going to die!’ cried out our youngest, sounding more like his brother than himself. Secretly, I feared that myself, but I wasn’t about to say that to him! I closed my eyes in terror. I wanted to put on a brave face for our son who was being even braver than me, but I couldn’t do it. Then came the screams.”
“We stood in a field having our gender reveal photos taken. I was 17 weeks pregnant. We shared our announcement photos. A year later to the day, he was gone. We said that was it, we were done. But, 11 months after he left this earth, his sister was due to arrive.”
