“‘Are you SURE?’ I asked the doc, reading the report. ‘It would be like being struck by lightening TWICE. He’s fine.’ They were wrong. He was SICK. Sicker than any baby I’d seen. I walked into the PICU bathroom, shut the door. I screamed, moaned, punched the mirror, and cried the guttural tears of a mother who already knew how the story ends, because she’d lived it before. I was reliving my worst nightmare.”

‘Yellow!’ Micah pointed to an adorable little chick with a big smile. Then, he spiked a 106 fever.’: Woman loses 3-year-old to Arthritis, ‘I am a mother, that will never change with time, space, or death’

‘WHAT IS THAT?’ Our baby girl had something interesting between her legs. ‘IS THIS A BOY?!’ My husband fell to the floor. ‘We have a SON!’
“‘Um, BABE…’ was all I could say. He texted me, ‘I just tested positive for the flu.’ I thought, ‘SERIOUSLY?! I’m 2 days overdue with baby #3 and sick as can be, and my husband has 2 strains of the flu?!’ GREAT. ‘This is it! We have to drive on black ice in a snowstorm to have this baby.’”

‘Get here now! It’s bad, it’s real bad.’ I jumped out of bed and yelled, ‘We have to go now! Something has happened.’ I knelt down beside him. ‘I am so sorry son, I love you so much Joshua.’
“My fiancé hardly had the car in park. I jumped out and ran down the driveway toward my son. Before I could get to Josh, two police officers held me back. I cried out, ‘My baby, my baby, I want my baby!’ At that moment, I knew my worst nightmare had come true. My precious son was gone in a blink of an eye.”

‘By age 9, I had thoughts about my own funeral. I wondered who would attend. Mom would find my Barbie dolls with notes like, ‘I want to die.’ Not at all normal for a child to be saying.’
“I remember telling my parents, ‘I love my life.’ That would soon change.‘ I lost the majority of my friends due to bullying. ‘I couldn’t even kill myself. I’m a failure.’”

‘CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BREATHE THROUGH THEIR MOUTHS. Not while awake, not while asleep. Never.’
“No one, in my 12 years of parenting, ever told me any of this. All the signs were there, right in front of our eyes, and I had no clue. Our son’s pediatrician, who we loved and trusted, never said a word. I had to find this, diagnose this, and push for treatment myself. And thank God I did.”

‘There was a time I hair sprayed my hair and lipsticked my lips if I even THOUGHT I might run into this guy on the way to class.’
“And now here we are…bringing sexy back. This is what love actually looks like, friends.”