“Beckett hadn’t heard for the first 13 months of his life and BAM. He was suddenly hearing. I cried on the way home, if I’m being honest. I received nasty, angry messages. I was ‘playing God’ by wanting to give him the gift of sound. Wanting our son to be able to hear us tell him ‘I love you’ was NOT a selfish thing.”
‘Your son is deaf.’ We were praying it was a huge mistake. They wheeled him out. I lost it.’: Mom shocked by newborn’s severe hearing loss, ‘we had no family history’
‘Danielle. You’re, like, really pregnant!’ I had JUST miscarried. How could I get pregnant TWICE?!’: Woman conceives 2 children naturally after infertility, donates remaining embryos to help another family birth twins
“I came down with a bad cold. I was nauseous and chalked it up to medication, but something inside me said to take the test. ‘PREGNANT.’ I wasn’t convinced. There was barely enough time for my body to naturally miscarry. It didn’t make sense. An ultrasound hours later confirmed the news. ‘You’re 8 weeks!’ We were so happy, but also angry. We had spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatment only to conceive naturally, TWICE.”
‘You will never become anything,’ my doctor said. I was going stone-cold deaf. ‘What now?’: Woman loses hearing to infection, vows ‘deafness will not define me’
“As a young girl, there were signs. I literally danced to my own beat, mispronounced words. I spent years humiliated, called to stand up in front of classmates and speak the language I couldn’t hear. On one test in particular, I completely bombed the oral exam, tears streaming down. ‘I thought you didn’t want to be labeled as different,’ my teacher said. That was the final straw.”
‘As my daughter was giggling, bursting with love in the next room, I was learning she wouldn’t be growing up at all.’ Mom’s 18-month-old daughter diagnosed with ‘Childhood Alzheimer’s’
“The phone rang. I grabbed a notepad, a pen, took a deep breath. How do you prepare yourself to answer a call with the results of whether your 18-month-old daughter is going to die? My mind shut off. All the air left the room. ‘Very serious, no cure yet, not sure, lots of research.'”
‘I woke up from the anesthesia. ‘Is it closed?’ My family nodded. I couldn’t get pregnant. I feared passing it on to my kids. I knew my life would change, but didn’t understand how much.’
“I questioned whether I’d ever have boyfriends, if someone would ever love me enough to marry me. I was weird looking. I was different. I kept telling myself I didn’t need kids. Then, I met a man and my life did a 180. I wanted a family and kids so badly.”
‘I imagined my father-daughter dance being perfect. But, he couldn’t hear the words. He cried the entire time. Not tears of joy. But, of sadness and disappointment.’
“My dad anxiously waited to hear. My mom, sisters, and I said the words: ‘I love you.’ Words he never heard his children say. But my dad broke down and cried. He cried, because he COULDN’T hear.”
What this mom of kids with special needs wishes people wouldn’t say to her
“I SEE YOU. Not just the special part. THE WHOLE PART.”
