“I felt so complete once my baby was in my arms, but unexpected tragedy struck again. This time, to me. After birth I was experiencing extreme back and chest pain. I thought it was just from breastfeeding and kept dismissing it. My gallbladder went haywire postpartum. My mom had to raise our miracle baby while I was fighting for my life. I couldn’t believe this was happening.”
‘You kids will be ok. I’ll be watching over you always.’ She promised to love our angel babies in heaven.’: After child loss, losing loved ones to cancer, woman gets rainbow baby only to be rushed into ‘emergency surgery’
‘I hadn’t even held my baby yet when the doctor came in. ‘We’ve found a growth. You need to come back in 2 weeks.’ I lost it! The happiest day of my life quickly turned into the worst.’ Cancerous growth found on woman’s labor day
“I remember my husband crying. He never cries, so I knew it was serious. I had a new baby and two small children at home. All I could think was, ‘I’m gonna die. I’m not gonna see my kids grow up.’ I’d started bleeding at 6 weeks pregnant. I had 20 ultrasounds and everyone said the baby was fine. But I knew something else was going on.”
‘Wow, that’s so cool I have 2 moms! May I have a snack?,’ was his reaction at age 5. ‘Aren’t you worried they’ll take the boys back?’ We are not a bit worried. We told him he grew up in her tummy.’
“And then we met her – this gorgeous strawberry blond young lady with the most beautiful green eyes looking at us from across the table. She had one question for us. Our knees were shaking just getting the news. We were not convinced it would be ‘wonderful’ at all. We were intimidated and scared.”
‘I was diagnosed with stage one cervical cancer at the age of 24. Because I was 24, I was not entitled to a free smear and the early cell changes in my cervix were not picked up.’
“I started bleeding between my periods and bleeding after sex. I went to see my General Practitioner and was told to come back when I was 25 for a smear. I thought that’s fine. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I had cancer.”
‘We needed to find a surrogate after my cervical cancer. My mom offered to carry my babies. She risked her own life to give birth to my children.’
“Not feeling them inside me was a roller coaster of emotions. At times I felt as if this was not even happening. Having these two bundles finally lay on my chest for skin to skin contact allowed me to feel that connection with them I had missed.”
‘They just placed our children inside of my mother’: Mom is ‘blessed’ to be surrogate for cancer-stricken daughter’s twins
“I could not think of a better person than the woman who is my best friend, the woman who gave birth to me.”
Cancer-stricken woman bravely plans for her own death: ‘Give your loved ones a roadmap’
“Where would you want to be if you were dying? It’s a morbid question, and emotionally laden, but it’s one that may be asked when you are diagnosed with cancer.”
