“Something about his behavior didn’t feel right, but it was hard to explain. Soon, every time we received a well-intended compliment about his intelligence, it felt like a knife was being twisted further into my stomach.”
‘He’s really smart.’ I nodded in my awkward parent small talk sort of way. ‘No, I mean REALLY smart,’ she insisted, staring at me with urgency, or something I couldn’t identify.’: Dad recounts son’s autism diagnosis
‘I was frozen in a restaurant with rain dripping off me, staring at my dead mom. ‘It’s okay,’ I told them, but was it?’
“What do I do, I wondered? I inhaled deeply, trying to see if she still smelled of flowers and herbs de Provence and soap like I remembered. I was contemplating reaching out to touch the back of her down coat, when she suddenly turned around and we were face to face.”
‘Being 40 is too old for babies. My time is running out. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had this dream. It is so vivid and so real. I want to be a mother and in my dream I am.’
“In a previous life, with a previous partner, in a different country and a different decade, I was pregnant. I was pregnant for 10 weeks. But it was 10 weeks of feeling pregnant, of feeling hopeful, feeling excited, but also feeling cautious. And I was right to be cautious. I was given a due date, which we never got to.”
‘I heard ‘save me,’ and then the doorbell rang. I was scared it was someone at the door in trouble. I looked out the window. It was dark, but I could see a shadow.’: Mom recalls hilarious story due to sleep deprivation
“I told him, ‘You need to get up. Someone is at the door and they’re yelling ‘save me.’ His eyes widened and he looked at me like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Someone is trying to break in!!’”
‘Miranda had not answered her phone or texts in 24 hours. Her door was unlocked, her TV was blaring, and I felt this horrible spirit in her apartment.’: Mom loses ‘baby girl’ killed by fentanyl overdose
“She died alone is what we are supposed to think. She did this to herself. We are not to blame. After 3 months we finally have a reason for her death.”
‘We noticed Milena was randomly limping, would have a sore tummy, and always wanted to be picked up and carried around. She started to scream at night.’
“He said ‘There are a couple of reasons why your child may not be able to walk. How could all of the doctors have missed this? Why her? What did I do wrong?”
‘That’s when I heard the thud. The sound of a 200-plus pound body hitting the nightstand next to our bed. A healthy, 31-year old, former athlete doesn’t just drop.’: Woman surprised by husband’s heart condition
“No one saw the storm coming, nor should we have. I was still in that newborn, post-delivery haze: night feedings, peri-pads, staples sore in my stomach. I had a rough go since my son’s birth. Then, that Saturday morning, the tsunami hit.”
‘I wondered what they meant by ‘whatever brain tissue was left.’ They were having me sign consent forms to keep her alive. He said ‘We need you to understand her life will not be normal.’
“The neonatologist and nurses still didn’t have any idea what was going on or why she was in the condition she was in. The neonatologist said, ‘we aren’t really sure what’s going on, but the baby is very, very sick.”
‘She had less than 25 words in her vocabulary when you met. You said to give her a chance. When others doubted her potential, you advocated.’
“She had round cheeks and two tiny, wispy pigtails that you tell me you remember like it was yesterday.”
‘It’s identical twins, the embryo split.’ WHAT! Hearing I may never carry a child at the age of 22 was heartbreaking and a complete shock’
“We went in for our first ultrasound around 6 weeks and that’s when we heard the news from the doctor ‘there is no heartbeat”