“The day was Friday the 13th and I STILL had this annoying, itchy, dry cough. ‘They want me to go to the hospital. They don’t want me to drive there, and they want me to go now,’ I nervously explained to my husband. All I can think is WHAT IS GOING ON? About 30 minutes later a doctor and a nurse come in. ‘We think it’s cancer,’ they said. After that, I blacked out.”
‘You’re really lucky you came in today, because something is definitely wrong.’: Woman strives to overcome unexpected Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosis
‘My husband looked at me with tears in his eyes. ‘You have no idea what it’s like watching you slowly die and there’s nothing I can do about it.’ To the outside world, no one knew what was happening to us.’
“After all the years he fought for our country and for his wife, he deserved more than being stuck with a sick wife in a drug coma stuck on the couch. Never in a million years would I have anticipated what would come next.”
‘I see a news report about a child who was abandoned in a parking lot after a woman fled on foot. I immediately recognized the photo of ‘Baby Jenkins.’ It was Tyler.’
“My cousin had actually given Tyler away to this other woman, because she could not handle taking care of a newborn. I was shocked and obviously did not understand the gravity of the situation. I called 911.”
‘There’s a picture of you with a shawl around your head. Why are you wearing that?’ I was scared to tell her.’: Daughter converts to Islam, keeps decision from her mom because she ‘didn’t want to hurt her feelings’
“I had sent in my application and a few weeks later, my mom called me to tell me there was an envelope in the mail for me. Not knowing what it was, I told her to go ahead and open it. I was no longer living a secret life. I could be free with my mom now, or so I thought… When others started learning about my conversion, they’d put bad thoughts into my mom’s head.”
‘While waiting to board our plane, my daughter was being her inquisitive self, meeting and saying ‘Hi’ to everyone she could, until she walked up on this man.’
“This wasn’t a short, little exchange.”
‘He went pale, stuttered and said, ‘Ma’am, one of your baby’s is in your birth canal, feet first.’ People started flying in. I begged him to give them more time.’: Mom’s son diagnosed with cerebral palsy is her ‘fighter’
“By the time the helicopter arrived, conditions were too dangerous. I assumed we would be rushed, lights blazing and sirens blasting to the next hospital. I kept asking when a doctor would get around to me. A resident finally came in. His face immediately gave him away.”
‘My OB guilt tripped me into getting the genetic tests done. I was 19. I developed a strange feeling.’: Woman predicts daughter’s Down syndrome diagnosis
“They plopped her on my tummy, facing her daddy. I cried the happiest tears. But, my husband looked at me with the most concerned look on his face. He knew.”
‘He’s really smart.’ I nodded in my awkward parent small talk sort of way. ‘No, I mean REALLY smart,’ she insisted, staring at me with urgency, or something I couldn’t identify.’: Dad recounts son’s autism diagnosis
“Something about his behavior didn’t feel right, but it was hard to explain. Soon, every time we received a well-intended compliment about his intelligence, it felt like a knife was being twisted further into my stomach.”
‘I was frozen in a restaurant with rain dripping off me, staring at my dead mom. ‘It’s okay,’ I told them, but was it?’
“What do I do, I wondered? I inhaled deeply, trying to see if she still smelled of flowers and herbs de Provence and soap like I remembered. I was contemplating reaching out to touch the back of her down coat, when she suddenly turned around and we were face to face.”
‘I was screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘Bryan, wake up! I need you. Don’t leave me.’ It was hidden in something. He had been clean. That is it.’
“My parents started calling every recent number, desperately searching for their child. When someone finally answered, they laughed and taunted my dad when he said he was looking for his son. They LAUGHED.”
‘Being 40 is too old for babies. My time is running out. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had this dream. It is so vivid and so real. I want to be a mother and in my dream I am.’
“In a previous life, with a previous partner, in a different country and a different decade, I was pregnant. I was pregnant for 10 weeks. But it was 10 weeks of feeling pregnant, of feeling hopeful, feeling excited, but also feeling cautious. And I was right to be cautious. I was given a due date, which we never got to.”
‘I heard ‘save me,’ and then the doorbell rang. I was scared it was someone at the door in trouble. I looked out the window. It was dark, but I could see a shadow.’: Mom recalls hilarious story due to sleep deprivation
“I told him, ‘You need to get up. Someone is at the door and they’re yelling ‘save me.’ His eyes widened and he looked at me like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘Someone is trying to break in!!’”
‘Miranda had not answered her phone or texts in 24 hours. Her door was unlocked, her TV was blaring, and I felt this horrible spirit in her apartment.’: Mom loses ‘baby girl’ killed by fentanyl overdose
“She died alone is what we are supposed to think. She did this to herself. We are not to blame. After 3 months we finally have a reason for her death.”
‘We noticed Milena was randomly limping, would have a sore tummy, and always wanted to be picked up and carried around. She started to scream at night.’
“He said ‘There are a couple of reasons why your child may not be able to walk. How could all of the doctors have missed this? Why her? What did I do wrong?”
‘That’s when I heard the thud. The sound of a 200-plus pound body hitting the nightstand next to our bed. A healthy, 31-year old, former athlete doesn’t just drop.’: Woman surprised by husband’s heart condition
“No one saw the storm coming, nor should we have. I was still in that newborn, post-delivery haze: night feedings, peri-pads, staples sore in my stomach. I had a rough go since my son’s birth. Then, that Saturday morning, the tsunami hit.”
‘I wondered what they meant by ‘whatever brain tissue was left.’ They were having me sign consent forms to keep her alive. He said ‘We need you to understand her life will not be normal.’
“The neonatologist and nurses still didn’t have any idea what was going on or why she was in the condition she was in. The neonatologist said, ‘we aren’t really sure what’s going on, but the baby is very, very sick.”
‘She had less than 25 words in her vocabulary when you met. You said to give her a chance. When others doubted her potential, you advocated.’
“She had round cheeks and two tiny, wispy pigtails that you tell me you remember like it was yesterday.”
‘It’s identical twins, the embryo split.’ WHAT! Hearing I may never carry a child at the age of 22 was heartbreaking and a complete shock’
“We went in for our first ultrasound around 6 weeks and that’s when we heard the news from the doctor ‘there is no heartbeat”
‘I came home and took off the removable seals from our lids… and THIS is what I found!’
“My husband actually battled infection in his body this fall, and we couldn’t figure out what was going on. Now I wonder if it too was attributed to our cups!”
‘Every week, they wanted me to abort. I was asked several times at every appointment. Did they get a prize for ‘selling’ me on an abortion? It sure seemed like it.’
“At 16 weeks, we were scheduled for our anatomy scan to find out if it was a boy or girl. On that day, not only did we find out that we were going to be having a boy, but we also found out that our baby had an anomaly, and we needed to see a specialist right away.”
‘Doctors told me, ‘He will look like a ‘normal’ newborn.’ The tech said, ‘They saw something wrong with the brain, right?’: Baby born with Factor V Leiden, ‘I am beyond proud of him’
“He had his hand on my shoulder when he told me my son’s condition has gotten worse. ‘Your sweet little boy needs you to stay strong’ he said. ‘He is still absolutely perfect.”
‘He found the one man in the mall he felt deserved a ‘thank you.’ A man wearing a Navy veteran’s hat.’: Proud mom watches from afar as son thanks elderly man for his service
“Without hesitation, he respectfully stood before that man who came 50 years before him, and told him he could rest easy, and that his generation would take it from there. All those sleepless nights, all the tears — magically disappeared. It suddenly became worth it.”
‘I found myself obsessing about alcohol and how much was too much while breastfeeding. Doesn’t everyone get so buzzed they can’t drive home?’: Mom grateful to enjoy family with ‘freedom from alcohol’
“I wish I could say that was the first time I woke up after a night of heavy drinking wondering who put the baby to sleep.”
‘He was yelling down the hospital halls, ‘Best day ever!’ As happy as I was for my son, I felt such sadness for my daughter. She was diagnosed first.’
“Both of our babies had cancer. Even before their diagnoses, they were inseparable, best friends. We sometimes joke, he couldn’t even let his sister go through brain cancer without him.”
‘It’s a cancer children are known to get. Your daughter has a tumor in her brain.’: Parents work to overcome daughter’s pediatric brain cancer diagnosis
“I looked at Abby and I told her, ‘You know those bad headaches and the vomiting you keep having?’ Abby looked at me and said, ‘Yes mom, they hurt.’ I told her, ‘It’s because you have something growing in there that shouldn’t be there. We have to get it out.’”