“The thing is, I also got pregnant many years before at age 24. It was the first time I’d had unprotected sex, and I had split up with the father. Having a termination was my only option. This has hugely troubled me the past 3 years, but I’m not ashamed to talk about it.”
‘I got with my boyfriend in July. By November, I was pregnant. We had been ‘irresponsible.’ We dealt with it. I convinced myself I’d killed my baby. I couldn’t look at my daughter without crying.’
‘I love you, and I’m home.’ He wrapped me in a warm embrace. We had a fairy tale image of what our life would be. The next year was a whirlwind of emotions.’
“We lived off ramen noodles and ham sandwiches. We slept in forty-five minute increments. ‘I miss us,’ he said. The spark of our honeymoon years quickly faded, and life together felt more like survival.”
I thought, ‘Oh, I must not be as far along as I thought.’ But as time went on, I said, ‘Is something wrong?’ The tech said, ‘Yes, we should hear a heartbeat.’
“I was so excited to see my baby I thought NOTHING of this statement.”
‘I gave birth to my first daughter when I was 21. I was in college and barely knew this baby’s father before I got pregnant. Here we are, about to be parents to 6.’
“My father’s wife passed away. They had a 2-year-old son. Biologically, he is my brother. My dad had to make the heart wrenching decision on who would be best fit to raise him.”
‘We spent 18 months trying for a baby. After turning to IVF, we found we were having not one, but THREE babies.’
“Triplets showed up! WHAT?! We were in between excited and totally freaked out. How can we handle this? There are only two of us? Do we need a new car? Oh my gosh, college?!”
‘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?”
Ten true things about the first year of motherhood
“Postpartum bodies are squashy and wobbly and dimpled and stretched and foreign and embarrassing and difficult and painful and gorgeously imperfect, and they tend to stay that way for quite awhile. You made a human. Now make your peace.”
POWERFUL: ‘I got to hold our son, skin to skin, something I’d dreamed of for years.’ Adoptive parents’ joyful meeting after IVF
“I burst into tears. My heart was so full. I loved him immediately.”
‘Catch of a lifetime’: After infertility battle, dad delivers baby barehanded
“As he caught the baby and handed him up to Mom’s chest, in that moment, he became a dad. That connection could never be severed.”