“I hid my pregnancy for 7 months. I should’ve been picking the perfect dress for Winter Ball. Instead, I was writing a birth plan. Once my sobs slowed, I looked at her birth father and said, ‘Those are the people who will raise our baby girl.’ I wavered. I fought. I broke. But in the end, I knew what I needed to do.”
“’Meet your son.’ Weeks later, we brought number 3 home. I noticed I was having mood swings. I joked to my girlfriends on a group text, ‘I‘m probably pregnant.’”
“We embraced each other. ‘I look like you,’ I said with watery eyes. In 1996, pregnant in her early 20s with already two kids, she wrapped me in a towel and called the police to tell them where I was. ‘I forgive you.’ I tried my hardest to keep my tears in. I knew if I let one fall, the rest would not stop.”
“Just like my mother taught me, I told her to kill them with kindness. But after a particular pair of older girls, who frankly know better, continued to be rude and exclude my daughter, I had to have a difficult talk with her.”
“Every birthday, when I blow out my candles, I use my one wish to wish my sibling could be able to walk and talk.”
“My sobbing husband pulled me close and choked out, ‘Don’t EVER let me be a vegetable. Do you hear me???’ The weight of his words shattered my shock. My face crumbled. ‘It’s recommended you never procreate again.’ We’d accidentally gotten pregnant the last month it would ever be possible.”
“‘All fixed up! You’ll be pregnant in 4 months tops!’ I was taking medicines, arguing with my husband. Our hearts were breaking. Coming off the infertility rollercoaster, God told me it was time to change our plans. ‘The birth mother is also pregnant.'”
“While my friends were dreaming about their future careers, I was dreaming about booze. I’d carve words into my legs just to feel something. And then I got pregnant. The only thing I wanted for this child is to not feel how I felt.”
“But your children, they grow right before your eyes. Their tiny voices change overnight. Their giggles and tears start and end with you…until they don’t. Everything else can wait. Parenting is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“I’d sit on the sidelines during PE while my peers played and had the time of their lives. I felt envy toward able-bodied children. I was that awkward girl in a wheelchair who didn’t know anybody. I didn’t fit in. One morning, I awoke to muscle loss in my hands. ‘But how will I create my art?!’ I had to find a way to make life happen.”
