“I hope one day you can understand the reason why my husband and I did what we did. In your right mind, you would never want your child, or any child, to be in the situation your beautiful boy was in.”
‘I love you so much for everything you’ve done for me over the past 40 years. Now it’s time for me to show you my love. A love I prayed to God I’d never have to show you.’
‘I looked to my husband with tears streaming down my face, apologizing. He lifted my chin, proud of me.’: Couple is the epitome of a dream team during childbirth laboring
“So many doubts started brewing. ‘My baby was breech for a reason,’ ‘my hips may be too narrow.’ But we were a team. My husband was my rock, my foundation, and got my mind where it needed to be. He’s truly my king. Nothing mattered but him.”
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“Well guess whose evil planned worked! Throw in a LED light for those late night changes, and a side shelf for those much needed wipes. The most practical and functional changing station on the planet!”
‘OK, FINE. You don’t want to pay teachers like a college educated PROFESSIONAL? Then give them the glorified BABYSITTER RATE.’
“As a young teacher, I am in $70,000 of school loan debt after finishing my bachelor’s and master’s degree. I had 5 years of experience and a master’s and was making $47,000, and as the primary income in my household, we were living paycheck to paycheck.”
‘Will he ever talk? This is the question I get asked most often about my son.’
“He may never be able to verbally communicate, and I can say with confidence – I’m okay with that. Cue the ‘gasps.'”
‘We had a family movie night. Well, let me take that back. My family had a movie night, while I sat on the floor trying to match the right lids to the right markers and put books back into bins.’
“Then I got up and made brownies, because I felt like brownies would make my family happy. Then I did the dishes because, well, I felt like I needed to do the dishes. Then I served everyone the brownies. Then I waited and collected their dirty brownie dishes.”
‘You are too skinny, not tall enough, and you have never delivered a baby before. You will have an unsuccessful triplet pregnancy.’ That’s what my doctor told me at my first ultrasound.
“’We need to get in the OR now,’ my doctor said. Then she turned to my mom. ‘You need to find Ryan. And pray. She has lost a lot of blood.’”
‘At 80 and terminally ill, she was self-conscious of how she looked. ‘They’ll think you’re a rich, eccentric old Hamptons lady,’ I told her. Having aspired to be one, she was happy with that.’
“We wanted to give her one ‘last hurrah’ before the end of her life. A police officer told my father of a place he just HAD to take my mother. ‘People find it only if they’re lost. It will remind her of Ireland.’ I pulled over. There, laid out, was horizon as far as her eyes could see. She was seeing the ocean she had crossed all those years earlier, for the very last time.”
‘Deep down I knew I made the wrong call. His foster trauma was inconvenient, and I pushed it aside for my ease. I completely dismissed him.’
“Once my house had fallen quiet, the interaction at the park came flooding back. Tears filled my eyes as I pictured him under the tree all by himself. I felt mad at myself.”
‘They don’t really feel pain anymore.’ WHAT?! The hardest thing we had to do was say goodnight, and walk out of her room that night.
“We made a decision to keep mom safe. Will they check on her enough? Will she be afraid? We all kissed her goodnight, and headed out the door. None of us looked back. What if we made a mistake? I couldn’t breathe.”