“Nothing readies you for when your 8 year old has completely lost control; for when his behavior disorders become so powerful his brain is no longer acting as a part of his body but has now waged war on it. But today–thank God, today–I kept it together.”
“We jumped in the car to run some evening errands. ‘Stay there. We are sending help,’ she said urgently. The thing that defined our relationship was snack wrappers. It’s embarrassing to admit how much of our daily interaction revolved around me telling him to, ‘pick them up!’ It is always the unimportant decisions that change lives.”
“Sometimes my teenager’s 6ft-tall stature and deep voice and shadow of a mustache and size 13 shoes trick me into thinking he might not need me so much anymore. Everything seems to be changing, but there is one thing that will never change…I will ALWAYS be his mom.”
Since her soldier husband wasn’t expected to return home from Kuwait for another few weeks, Cydney began typing up a text message for him with an update about their newborn twins. Meanwhile, she had no idea someone very special had just walked into the hospital room.
“Hold your child a little tighter tonight.”
“I was happily drinking a margarita. They all looked at me like I was crazy. I replayed every second leading up to her death. I realized there was no amount of science that could save her, but why her?”
“To EVERY marker of Down Syndrome the world calls broken, we filled in with gold.”
“He was hitting his milestones. He was happy. He was supposed to beat the odds. One evening, we noticed he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t making eye contact and was whimpering non-stop. We thought it was the heat, so we gave him a cool bath and went to sleep. The next morning, his face turned blue before my eyes. He went limp. The ambulance came and took Noah away. I couldn’t believe it. My baby wasn’t my baby anymore. Watching him fight made me so strong. For him. For us.”
“Here I was, a young 20-something female who thought I had control over my life. I nervously dialed the number, terrified she’d pick a new family to parent her unborn baby. After all, I was no longer ‘childless.’ 3 weeks later, we got a call back. ‘She wants YOU.’ Humbling is the only word.”
“Six months ago, my whole world came crashing down around me. My husband suffered right in front of me. Losing him at a young age broke my heart, but it didn’t break my spirit.”
