“I answer the age-old question of ‘When are you going to have babies?’ with a smile on my face and a reply of, ‘Oh no babies, I have dogs.’ I see the answer disappoints them, but the truth is so much more depressing.”
‘We all started to notice I was sleeping, a lot. I didn’t feel ‘normal.’ I started college, started dating, and felt like things were starting to fall into place. Oh boy was I wrong.’
‘The first thing in his search was, ‘How to track girlfriend’s phone.’ Blood drained from my face.’: After becoming a ‘shell’ of her former self in abusive relationship, woman finds true love, realizes ‘I am enough’
“I saw bruises on my 2-year-old’s face. I figured, ok he’s clumsy, maybe he fell down or something. Then I found a bruise on his neck that looked like a handprint. I pushed the feeling aside, and thanked her for watching my boys. I ran my little guy a bath and started taking his clothes off. Immediately I knew something more sinister had happened. My baby had bruises from his upper back all the way down to his ankles.”
‘I’m OK mom. I love you too,’ was the last thing he said to me. That was 10:20 on Saturday night.’: Mother tragically loses her ‘best friend’ son to heroin overdose
“He always answered my calls. But on Sunday morning, he didn’t. And I just knew he was gone. The only way I can explain this pain is that every cell in my body that created my son is on fire yearning to hold him again. It’s a physical pain only a mother would know. It’s in my bone marrow. Just a deep yearning to touch him, and hold him.”
‘We found out we were pregnant at 17. We were scared. Soon after, we were having a second.’: Woman shares teen pregnancy, co-parenting story, ‘I’m so grateful for my ex’
“We had the ‘million dollar’ family. A boy, a girl, and two high school sweethearts who got married and made it through teen pregnancy. But then, we started to lose the ‘spark.'”
‘He started talking to me, his lips were moving but I couldn’t hear any words. Slowly, everything began to get darker until I emerged into complete darkness.’
“‘It makes sense now.’ I asked him what he was talking about. ‘My sister,’ he said. ‘It makes sense why she’s gone. Now we know. We finally have an answer.”
‘A close friend was utterly devastated she was going to have a C-section. I wasn’t the right person to have that conversation with.’: Mom of triplets talks loving your body after infertility struggles
“I was 105 pounds when I found out I was pregnant with triplets. My body stretched and stretched. To be honest, my only thought was, ‘You get to have a baby!’”
‘Everyone was telling me something was WRONG with my baby and I had to FIX him. So, I OBSESSED about it. Oh, holy night, guys. ENOUGH.’
“I sound harsh, but can we stop? I was that mom, too. With the busy fingers. Googling all the things that could possibly be wrong with my child.”
‘The phone rang with a call that turned my life upside down. It BROKE ME. I thought I had moved on, turns out I was wrong.’
“I naively thought, ‘not us!’ Here we are in the middle of a story I could never have imagined. They were my perfect storm.”
‘I let out a loud cry and immediately the words ‘I’M GOING TO BE A MOM’ poured out. My husband was in the other room and screamed ‘WHAT!’ We sobbed for hours. We couldn’t believe it.’
“I will never forget the moment our doctor told us. I was terrified what his next response would be. What happened? I broke down in tears. I was a healthy 26 year old. I could not understand.”
‘I stood beside her while she birthed my son. It’s not lost on us she broke her own heart to complete ours.’: Family adopts child from biological mother they met that day
“‘You can touch him if you want.’ I could not believe the strength she had. Not only the strength to push out an almost 10-pound baby, but the strength to watch as that baby was placed into my arms, wheeled out of her room, and into the room where my husband waited. We are holding the child she delivered and calling him our son.”