“I knew something was very wrong. I was barely able to hold myself up. ‘Really Jen? Pull it together.’ No one had answers. All I heard was, ‘I think you’re depressed.’ I felt like someone had filled my head with cement. At this point, I had given up. I convinced myself I was out of my mind. I laid in that MRI machine and lost track of time. I felt like my life was over at 15. The tech pulled up the images on the computer. ‘You’re going to need a neurosurgeon.’”
“I had just gotten home from running errands and opened up the fridge to pour a glass of wine. But before I opened the bottle, I ran upstairs to take a pregnancy test. My husband and I could never have kids on our own, but for some reason, I felt the need to just make sure. Within minutes, I had the answer. Tears poured down my face as I called for my husband. But here’s the honest truth. I didn’t want another child.”
“I went to work like normal. I put on my ‘happy face.’ Nobody knew what I planned to do after my shift. Living alone, I didn’t have anyone to stop me this time. When I went back to the service desk, the phone rang. I could tell Pam had been crying. ‘She didn’t make it.’ I fell up against the wall. I couldn’t breathe or swallow. I had to break the news to my co-workers. That night, I sat on my porch. I blurted out, ‘I don’t want to die anymore.’ As soon as I said it, this huge amount of pressure was just taken off of my chest. I had to keep going.”
“I’d catch the scent of him on my shirt or the smell of the hand soap I used at the NICU and my heart would long for him. After six long months in his tiny corner of the world, never seeing anything outside that NICU pod, we brought our new son home.”
“At 7 p.m. all the houses around the country breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the day when parenting ends and ‘me time’ begins. That is simply not the case for me. My kids go to bed late and wake up late. And that’s okay. Children are more capable at recognizing what they need than we give them credit for.”
“The doctor turned off the lights and we looked at the screen. I immediately saw two sacs. Twins? My husband didn’t know what he was looking at, so he didn’t realize until the doctor said it out loud. We both started crying and saw both little heartbeats flicker on the screen. We joked we were going to get our money’s worth from IVF by getting two babies for the price of one. I never thought a miscarriage would happen again. I was wrong. ‘I’m so sorry, I only see one heartbeat.’ I just had this gut feeling that we would lose the other baby.”
“I was the wrong sex. I kept telling myself the more weight I lost, the better it would get. I just hadn’t lost enough yet. I spent my free time counting calories and thinking up convincing lies if anyone were to ask. I changed who I was before I knew who I was, and I lost any identity I had.”
“I struggled to eat because my belly always felt so full. Every day I assumed it would be the day we rush to the hospital, but days went by and somehow, I kept them in. When they pulled out the first baby, it felt like a 5 lb. weight was lifted off my lungs. ‘If you can get out of bed and into a wheelchair, you can go see the babies.’ Challenge accepted.”
“I must’ve been tested for everything under the sun. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you.’ The harder I worked, the more stamina I lost and the weaker I got. They told me it was anxiety. They were doctors. They had to be right. At that point, I’d given up.”
“She was dancing around the facts, and we could tell. She wanted to see if we would scare. He’d run from his previous placement, was failing all of his classes. She had no other place to turn. We asked to FaceTime him. We saw the emptiness in his eyes and the face of a kid who didn’t even know what hope was. He couldn’t make eye contact. His skin was covered with sores, his hands curled and tremored. He was 15. He was ours. He told us the drugs he’d done, the girls he’d been with, and the things he’d seen, and I couldn’t help but see the beginnings of a boy who would leave that past behind.”
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