“‘I want to build us a van to live in. We can show our kid the world.’ I wish I remembered exactly what he said—I was rage-deaf by that point—but it was something like that. That was the moment I knew we weren’t going to raise this baby.”
‘I’m sitting on my bed, in my teenage bedroom, at my mother’s house. It’s 3 days after I found out I got knocked up by the first guy I ever met from Tinder.’
‘You can touch him if you want,’ the doctor said after our son was delivered. Our son. A child that just 3 weeks prior, we did not know existed.’
“While dating and getting to know each other, I had to share something huge with him. It was certainly too early to talk about children, but I knew if our relationship was going to progress, he needed to know.”
‘From the bathroom all he heard was, ‘BABE?!’ Just 2 weeks after meeting the birth mom, we found out we were pregnant. I was actually mad. ‘God why NOW?’
“I had a missed call. My husband then got a call. We looked at each other… ‘Answer it!’ ‘Louis, are you with Audrey?’ ‘Yes, she can hear you.’ The words she spoke stopped time for me. Everything she said next was hard to process. I was shocked.”
‘I was standing in the checkout line at the grocery store. I had just had my third baby a month earlier. I will never forget what happened while we were waiting to pay for our groceries.’
“I turned back toward my grocery cart to begin putting my items on the conveyor with one arm while using the other to hold the baby and keep track of the two big kids. To my alarm, my cart was nearly empty.”
‘The baby was born in his bed.’ This was the text message I received. It was a relative of mine, and we knew this child was coming, but not like this.’
“In desperation, I started crying. I remember rocking her, with tears streaming down my face. I said, ‘You tricked me.’ I was so overwhelmed. How was I going to do this alone?”
‘The growth is very large. There’s a chance the baby may not survive.’ Right then, reality hit me. All the fear and nerves I carried through my pregnancy hit me all at once.’
“It was this second I knew, I knew something was different. Something had changed and our baby girl may not be as perfect as was earlier suggested.”
‘IT’S A BOY!,’ they said as they held him up over the sheet. She turned and looked at me. ‘That’s your baby.’ It was the most incredible moment of my life.’
“The next day I walked into our apartment building to find Evan on his knees sobbing. The doctor had called.”
‘My honest thought when I first saw her was, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this bad.’ The nurses were silent. Emmy was silent. It was eerie and terrifying.’
“I told my husband something was wrong and they weren’t telling us. When she finally came back after what felt like an eternity, all she said was the doctor was waiting for us. I could hardly get on my feet.”
‘The doctor knelt beside my bed with our baby. ‘There are things I want to point out to you.’ Those words hit me hard. ‘No she’s perfect. That’s not possible – she was already tested for that.’
“This was not how it was supposed to be. I was grieving the perfect baby I had in my head for 10 months. I felt pity for not only myself, but her. I wanted to know ‘why us?’”
‘When I met my husband, I thought I had found love so raw, so deep, and so genuine that I would never fall in love again. I was wrong.’
“When there was no heartbeat on the ultrasound, and he knew that no words could take the pain away, so he just hugged me tight – I fell in love again.”
