“Strength was required to face the inevitable questions of ‘is this your first pregnancy?’ Or, ‘how many children do you have?’”
‘I’ll never forget walking into the hospital on a cold January night, preparing to give birth for the second time. The nurses buzzed me through the doors, but the atmosphere was anything but celebratory.’
‘She’s too confident,’ they whisper to each other. If only they knew she leads with self-assurance to overcome her debilitating self-doubt and social anxiety.’
“‘She’s too unkempt. Kids are not an excuse for looking so ragged,’ they added. ‘She talks and shares her opinion too much.'”
‘Just as I was attempting to fall asleep, I heard my oldest son whimpering in his room. This is so unusual that I raced down the hallway to check on him.’
“I cried a little bit thinking about my dad and how much I miss him and wish he were here. I fell asleep for a bit, but a weird dream jolted me awake. There were some creaks. Then, there was silence.”
‘Nothing prepared me for my wife’s cesarean. NOTHING. Birth was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.’: Husband praises ‘stoic, strong, powerful, dedicated’ wife for ‘bringing children into the world’
“Reaching from a gaping hole in my beautiful wife’s stomach was the head of a bloody, powder white, child-like creature. I recall Mel lying naked in front of the doctors; her stomach like a deflated balloon. But nothing shocked me as much as the next day. She was the most badass person I knew.”
‘I go from loving him to hating his guts over a period of 24 hours. I never thought that would ever happen to us. Ever.’: Wife talks ‘seeing the bright side’ in your marriage and falling back in love
“Some people say they loved each other MORE after having children. I think that’s surely got to be a crock.”
‘When people ask me why I would ever do something like this, I have a simple answer – ‘I have a uterus, it works, I’m not using it, so why not let someone else who doesn’t have that same ability?’
“I was supposed to be the one to bring them fertility, and yet here we were, almost a year later and nothing.”
‘We heard this loud, echoing bang above us in the bathroom. Thirty seconds later, this scream came from upstairs. I can still hear it to this day. There she was, on the bathroom floor.’
“My best friend entered before me. She begged me not to come in. I did anyways – I had to see for myself. All of her shoes were neatly lined up next to the foot of the bed. Her clothes were hung up, and her beauty products were organized.”
‘I was starting to look pregnant, my boobs were huge, and I welcomed the nausea. The image appeared on the screen. I looked intently and finally asked, ‘where’s the heartbeat?!’
“I started laughing, mostly because it couldn’t possibly be true – I felt pregnant, I looked pregnant, and a week before, things were fine. I began sobbing.”
‘Before the doctor punctured my belly, my husband looked to me. ‘Do you wanna know?’ My fairytale pregnancy was being ripped apart.’: Mom’s devastation over shocking Lymphatic Malformation diagnosis leads to ‘pure bliss’
“I had no clue what to feel. I was so devastated that something was wrong with our perfect little baby. The only thing running through my mind was, ‘Please don’t take my baby.’ I never once cried seeing how severe his malformation was. I just kept thinking, ‘That that’s my baby boy. I was so in love.’”
‘She told me I ‘look like a damn banana’ and needed to go to the ER right away. I had been fighting horrible flu-like symptoms for almost a week leading up to this.’
“They sent me home with strict orders not to take my birth control anymore. I wish I had known this was possible. I met with the doctor and got the scariest news of my life.”