“Within weeks, my antique jewelry was gone. The horror was so awful, the things that went on. I remember begging her not to make me go into the room with them. She said, ‘It’s about to get real,’ and then she was gone. I found a single, unused stamp. I used an old envelope from an overdue bill and a scrap of paper to write the only family who would still listen. They lived 3,000 miles away. I wrote 5 words: ‘GET ME OUT OF HERE.’ That was 13 years ago.”
“As soon as I gave birth, my mother told the doctor, ‘Get the baby out of here! We’re not keeping it.’ That crushed my soul. I was 16 and never allowed to see my daughter. I overheard the nurse say ‘severe infection.’ I cried even more. ‘She didn’t make it.’ 29 years later, after the birth and death of my daughter, I received an email on Ancestry.com. Deep in my heart, I knew. My mind was racing.”
“I should’ve known she was thinking about something by the way she stared with her eyebrows furrowed. But she didn’t say a word until Mrs. Cynthia came back to sit with us. I am usually able to stop my kids from asking these things out loud. I see their wheels turning, and I shush them before the words even escape their mouths. But my daughter was too fast, and I was left there, panicking.”
“‘Isn’t it time for you to be moving on?’ No. I will never move on. My child died, it’s not like I lost an earring. You don’t just pick up and move on to the next thing. ‘God wanted him more.’ This did not comfort me. My doctor said this. He didn’t call Jensen a him, he actually said, ‘God wanted it more.’ My son is not an it.”
“The moment after her birth I had so longed for – the intense emotion I was supposed to have, never happened. The feeling I was supposed to get when she first cried, never happened. The love I was ‘supposed’ to have seeing Dan hold our daughter, never happened. The day she was born, I became a different person. I started hearing and seeing things. These images and voices would pop into my head.”
“Your vagina and stomach are in a world of pain. More often than not, there’s been a cut somewhere. You struggle to get comfortable in that hard hospital bed. You can barely sit, stand, lie down, or walk. A picture really is worth 1,000 words. This is me, roughly 24 hours after giving birth. I have no idea who took the picture, but you can tell how I feel just by looking at it.”
“‘So I’ll only have a baby brother?,’ my daughter asked, confused. I woke up at 5:24 that morning and went to check on her, in Matt’s arms. I was grateful it happened peacefully. I woke him up. ‘She’s gone.’ We each held her, then one another, before calling the nurse in. We kissed her perfect little cheeks. ‘Goodbye, sweet girl.’”
“I went for a walk in the snow the other day. My children insisted they could walk themselves, that they didn’t need the sled. But I pulled it anyway. After we walked a bit longer, they both grew tired and climbed in. Sometimes, they climbed out. But they always returned. And I always kept pulling. This is what motherhood is. We keep pulling the sled of support. Even when they don’t need it, we are there to help them keep going.”
“People always give me unasked advice about my kids. I often hear, ‘You’re spoiling him. He’s got to toughen up and be a man.’ BREAKING NEWS. I am a WOMAN. No matter what I do, I could never raise him to be a ‘man.’ I know nothing about being one. Every chance I get, I will always hug him and feed him affirmations. I want him to always know he is loved.”
“She continued to scan my belly and remained rather quiet. I had no idea what to expect during an ultrasound but I thought that was kind of odd. Jokingly I asked, ‘There isn’t twins in there, right?’ She looked over at me and smiled. My heart dropped and I sat up quickly.”
