“I frantically asked a lady at a kiosk if she had seen my daughter. She looked up at me confused and asked how she got away. Where was I? Why wasn’t her dad watching her? I ignored her questions and told her to call security before I darted away. After an hour of me violently shaking, the guilt set in. The kiosk lady’s words began to repeat in my head.”
‘My daughter darted away in a crowded mall. There was no sign of her.’: Mom terrified after losing daughter in mall, reminds parents ‘how quickly a child can get away’
‘As a mom, you just KNOW. Something didn’t feel right. Cars zipped by on the busy street. I trembled as we made our way to the front of the building. We were only a few steps away. I wanted to run, but I didn’t.’
“I wish I could’ve jumped into one of those passing cars and pretended it never happened. That I hitchhiked, ran away, disappeared. I thought we could find someone to ‘fix’ my son. As the woman in the office spoke, I couldn’t take my eyes off her mouth. I knew the word that would come. I didn’t believe her.”
‘I heard him speaking to my OB. ‘It’s nothing to worry about – it’s just a little spotting,’ he told her. As that word ‘just’ rolled off his tongue, I cringed.’
“I’ll never forget laying in that cold, sterile room, praying that I was wrong, hoping that I was being overly cautious. But I knew with certainty I wasn’t.”
‘To the nurse who made me feel guilty for using an elevator. ‘I had to park on the roof, there’s no way I’m making it all the way up there!’ You scoffed, and gave me an eye roll.’
“You said, ‘Well, I was planning on taking the stairs but since you’re not capable of that…’ You watched me laugh it off and smile, but here’s what you didn’t know.”
‘I spent hours searching, which told me my daughter had autism and was mentally impaired. I cried and cried for weeks, absolutely devastated my child was ‘not like the rest.’
“I started to notice she wasn’t ‘just like her sister’ around 9 months old. She still didn’t have her first teeth, and was barely babbling any words, let alone noises.”
‘If you are not the parent of a heroin addict — you are lucky. Say a prayer and stop judging.’
“I felt his words in the pit of my stomach. ‘Mom, I need help.'”
‘You can’t expect her to act like a princess if she’s treated like a slave’: Dad’s honest reply after being asked if he ‘felt unhappy with the monotony’ of his marriage
“Don’t for one second think it’s all on her to make things better or more exciting.”
‘How I coped? I stopped beating myself up so much’: How this mom ‘survived’ her toddler and newborn 19 months apart
“I worried all the time, am I loving one more than the other? Am I disadvantaging the toddler by not giving him attention?”
‘You know that mom you’re judging because her kid has no shoes on at Target? Yeah, that’s me.’
“Thank you so much for your concern, but I got it. His feet are bare, but he is fine.”
