Surprise!
🤩
‘Ewww put that away. I’ll never get stretchmarks like that when I’m pregnant.’ It was such a personal attack – feelings of shame and disgust had me cringing at my husband’s touch.’
“I was left curled up on the couch in the fetal position. I remember grabbing my thighs and crying to my husband, ‘How am I so big already? How could I possibly get any bigger?’ My 3-year-old son asked, ‘Mama, what’s wrong with your belly?’”
‘She came running into the house screaming. ‘What? What is it?’ ‘Outside.’ She pointed to the open front door. ‘Daddy. The bird.’ I picked her up, and she buried her head into me sobbing.’
“‘Okay, let’s go look.’ She was hesitant, but tiptoed out to the porch. ‘What’s going on out here?,’ I asked, still confused. ‘There are babies! He killed the babies!’ The look on my face turned from confusion to horror. ‘What?’ I snapped my head towards my husband.”
‘Don’t tell nobody. I’ll give you some money when I get paid,’ he said as he was getting off me. I was scared out of my mind. My uncle, my favorite uncle, had hurt me.’
“I can remember looking over at my brother who was still asleep. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was too scared so I laid there, not speaking, thinking about the innocence I would never get back. He hurt me in the worst way that night.”
‘I was about a mile away from my parents’ house when I saw a pair of headlights coming at me in my lane. I was so scared it was going to burst into flames. I sat in front of the car screaming.’
“I brushed it off and thought, ‘Oh there’s no way I’m pregnant.’ I went to Tennessee for a week for my birthday. I had my cousin buy me a bottle of Jager and I couldn’t even drink, it made me so sick. When I got home, I took another test. Sure, enough I was pregnant.”
‘I wish I could prepare you for the news you’ll receive just hours after snapping this blissful picture. I know you’ve been worried about the size of your happy baby’s belly.’
“He’s such a happy, calm baby. He’s never been sick, so you know there has to be an easy solution to whatever is causing his belly to appear big… A simple solution that may bring a few small moments of fear and discomfort, but after that, all will be fine.”
‘He had 10 fingers and 10 toes, but they were fused together. He was beautiful, but I was very disconnected. He looked different.’
“It was hard for me to look at him. He was my second child but I felt like I was a first-time mom and I was going to break him. Every irrational fear went through my mind. I finally realized I was madly in love with this little boy of mine, and was ready to go to the ends of the earth to get him the care he needed.”
‘He was just gone. I came home one night to the apartment my boyfriend and I shared to find everything was missing. He terminated our lease and emptied our joint bank account.’
“Just a few weeks later, I woke up one morning feeling ‘different.’ I really can’t explain it, because it didn’t make any sense. But something in me, knew. I sat shaking with a pregnancy test in my hands. My body was barely functioning. But against all odds, two pink lines appeared.”
‘Staring into my Poppy’s eyes, I asked him to pick a baby for us when he got to heaven. I kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, ‘make it a girl.’
“I was hiding this secret. ‘Don’t you want the best care for your baby?’ Of course we did. As we approached our assigned room, there was a plaque outside the door. The name of the family who donated the funds for that room? The McAngel family. We knew my Poppy would get her through this.”
‘Our attorney told us we shouldn’t get our hopes up. It doesn’t happen like this and it would not turn out in our favor. I didn’t know if we would hear from her again.’
“We were contacted by several women. Then I got a Facebook message from a woman who had seen our post.”
I remember looking at the doctor and demanding him to leave the room. ‘Wow Crystal you can’t even grow a baby correctly.’ I looked at my husband and we both began to cry. ‘WHY MY BABY?’
‘Hearing the little baby I was growing inside me was already going through so much made me feel like the biggest failure.”
