“I had no idea what was happening, but I knew my mom was behind a cold, closed door that I wasn’t allowed to go through. I wish I could’ve held her hand – she needed it.”
‘She was born with her umbilical chord around her neck, her face blue from lack of oxygen. She came into the world feet first. She always goes about things her own way, birth was no exception.’
‘There are police officers in the hall. ‘I want them to hurt me, mommy! I want them to kill me with their guns!’ He started crying and hitting himself in the head.’
“‘I think he’s manic,’ I say. ‘His moods are rally erratic and I’m worried.’ The nurse looks at me skeptically. Who am I to know about ‘mania?’ It was stupid to bring him here. He has been through hell.”
‘There’s good news and there’s bad news,’ my dad told me. ‘The good news is they found out what’s wrong with Mom.’ I didn’t know how much longer I could hang on.’
“After 2 years of troubling behavior with my mom, and doctors assuring us there was nothing wrong, we finally had concrete answers. Dad’s voice caught in his throat and tears welled in his eyes. He said the word we most feared.”
‘School was torture. People made fun of me for ‘going to the bathroom too much.’ They thought I was anorexic. The doctor tried to dismiss me, telling me I had nothing but the stomach flu.’
“I noticed my husband and mother exchange a very worried look. He told me this was likely the cause of all my problems since I was 4 years old. He also decided it was a good idea to tell me his last patient with this condition died.”
‘With tears welling up in my eyes, I was only able to mutter one question: ‘But why does it hurt so much when I eat?’ Nobody answered me.’
“For what felt like an eternity, I laid quietly in my hospital bed, still surrounded by these strangers who were supposed to be some of the best doctors in the country, until a young-looking doctor standing across from the psychologist broke the silence, ‘Your head is messing with you, there is nothing physically wrong.'”
‘I was called into the office. My mom was there, waiting to pick me up. ‘We are leaving your dad,’ she said as we walked to the car. I loved him so much, and I was heartbroken.’
“When I got the autopsy report, it read: no evidence she had a child. That was hard. When people tell me she loved me, she just didn’t know how to show it, I think back. ’There was no evidence at the scene that suggested she had children.’”
‘Mom received a phone call, we must come to the hospital quickly. We were meant to be picking out baby clothes! Our world came crashing down. Life would never be the same again.’
“My Auntie came out of the ward, face pale and sick. I started saying ‘no no no no’. She told me I needed to sit down, and I collapsed to the floor. We were ushered into a small, hot side room.”
‘I picked him up from daycare. His little legs had bruises all over them between his knees and ankles. He was only 4 months old, so he wasn’t crawling yet. There was no obvious explanation.’
“My husband inquired about the bruising. He was told that, ‘babies just bruise easily,’ and the bump was just a birthmark. Our minds were filled with fear and uncertainty and our stomachs were in knots. Feelings of anger crept up inside of me.”
‘I’ll never forget walking into the hospital on a cold January night, preparing to give birth for the second time. The nurses buzzed me through the doors, but the atmosphere was anything but celebratory.’
“Strength was required to face the inevitable questions of ‘is this your first pregnancy?’ Or, ‘how many children do you have?’”
‘That baby in the photo, the one you can’t see. The one who’s all snuggled up inside her mama. She did not survive.’
“I had been in the hospital for a week being monitored. I was in the safest place that I could be and under constant supervision. And then, it happened.”
