“Strength was required to face the inevitable questions of ‘is this your first pregnancy?’ Or, ‘how many children do you have?’”
‘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.’
‘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.”
‘I can’t! I can’t!’, it hurt so much in my chest at that moment I couldn’t say anything else. We were relieved our little girl’s suffering was about to end, just not the way we had hoped.’
“We were told she would be okay. We were told she was strong. We were led to believe she wouldn’t need to be hospitalized. After being intubated, her father was showering, and I heard what sounded like crackling.”
‘Last night I was a mama alone in the ER with my sick baby. As my feverish child sobbed, I paced the waiting room. There was panic across faces.’
“But as I would learn, I wasn’t actually alone.”
‘I was lost at 4 a.m. I needed help and this man assured me he could help me get home. In a puddle of my own blood, he left me in the dark.’
“He called out in Spanish, “I have your phone, you can’t call anyone.”
‘Her skin hardened within seconds. After hardening, it began to split. Behind the curtain, I sensed their frantic panic. My husband’s silence scared me. He kept saying, ‘It’s bad.’
“He told me, ‘Jennie, I looked in her eyes, and she has the most beautiful soul.’ Broken is the only way to describe the feeling as they placed her in my arms. They had never seen anything like this. She was fine; everything was perfect, and then it wasn’t — just like that.”
‘You hear a terrible crash in your son’s bedroom. He looks like he is sleeping, the TV is upside down across the room. His daddy will shake him. You both scream, ‘Wake up Booboo, wake up!’
“NOTHING can prepare you what you are about to see. You walk to the waiting room, and there is a security guard. ‘Why do they have security?’ A woman is squeezing a bag… a bag that connects to your son’s mouth. ‘SHE IS BREATHING FOR MY SON WITH THAT BAG.'”
‘When I was a tiny 5-week-old baby my biological dad became angry at me for crying. He shook me violently and threw me against a wall.’
“I lived with a new family, but things weren’t so good there either. I wasn’t gaining weight and my day care was very concerned about me – a lot of people were, I guess. When DHS finally came to take me to another home, I was found on the floor laying in animal waste.”
‘We just don’t know right now. We will have to wait and see.’ WHAT?!? In less than 24 hours, my sweet, active, PERFECT baby boy was paralyzed from the neck down.’
“As the doctor was trying to tell me it was ‘just a virus,’ I looked at her and said, ‘But he can’t move.’ She suddenly stopped and looked at him a little closer. After prompting him, he still did not move. I saw the panic rush across her face. My entire world collapsed in front of me.”
‘When Colton was 6 days old, I walked up to him when he was napping and found his top lip was blue and that he wasn’t responding.’
“Doctors were already prepping him for the incubator before I even could comprehend what was being said. We had to watch our son be hooked to a machine to get the oxygen his little body needed.”
