“My contractions started suddenly, like five-minutes apart. I froze and went into shock. I remember my nerves taking over and my body shaking uncontrollably. ‘This baby needs to come out NOW.’ My heart became so heavy, it felt like it sank, and we just held hands and cried together.”
“My phone rang. ‘You’re a match!’ I stopped breathing for a brief moment. My BMI was still too high to donate. I tipped the scales at 297 pounds. The surgeon told me, ‘You need to lose more weight.’ I’d been searching for my ‘why’ for months. She needed me, and I needed her. Someone else’s life was now in my hands. I was called to save her.”
“One day, she stopped eating and cried most of the morning. I thought they would send me home with Tylenol. The doctor came in and said, ‘Pack a bag and go to the hospital.’ I had to go full steam ahead.”
“‘There’s nothing to worry about.’ I remember looking for clues. Nobody else did. Not the midwife, not our health visitor, not the doctors. Nobody. I didn’t want it to be true.”
“My youngest is 15 months old, and I wear compression socks. My 7-year-old calls my tummy ‘squishy,’ and I can’t hide the stretch marks. I struggle with hormonal swings and anxiety that made me message two doctors and a nurse friend today. No calendar date or finish line can return anything to how it was before.”
“I was a child learning I would never carry a child. I had the option for treatment. I would be upstairs doing this painful and intrusive act, while my family was desperately pretending I wasn’t. I felt defected and apologetic for not being ‘complete.’”
“Laugh. Giggle. Hum. Squeal. Never stop. No matter what. Just keep being you.”
“When he outgrew cute, the calls for help increased. Desperate for summer options for a 15-year-old in diapers. Desperate for anything to assist a non-verbal man child. The voices were silent. Or they whispered, ‘Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.’ When he outgrew cute, the walls caved in, and the house became a tomb.”
“When she tried to look at her face, she paused for a while. I will never forget that pause. It was like the air had been sucked out of the room. I turned away. I grieved over the vision of my daughter I had created.”
“The gate separating the patio from the pool was propped wide open. She went straight to the pool. My husband was first to see the horror in her face.”
