“When I got back nurses and doctors were running in his room, yelling ‘code blue!’ I wasn’t allowed in the room – they were intubating him. I felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I was sobbing.”
‘I don’t know why your husband’s in pain, he has no meningitis.’ I’ll never forget when the nurse angrily said this to me when I told her my husband said his head feels like it’s on fire.’
‘This is dwarfism and I’m 99% certain the result will be fatal.’ There it was. A bomb. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, I didn’t understand at all. She was perfect.’
“As she rambled, completely ignorant of the fact I was in my own puddle of tears, she wrung her hands. It was horrible. At that point, my mother stepped in. She and my husband scooped me out of the chair and we left, never to return.”
‘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.”
‘My husband would say odd things like, ‘My chest hurts. I feel like I’m having a heart attack.’ I would find him sitting down in the shower. I started getting angry. He was not demanding answers.’
“My doctor’s face turned white. My stomach was in my throat and I wanted to scream. A second doctor entered and said, ‘It’s okay. They all look great!’ She showed me the monitor. Not 1, not 2 but 3 babies!”
‘When he was born I heard, ‘Oh my God. He has RED HAIR!’ I paused. ‘No, just wash him a few times.’ The nurse washed him 3 times. ‘No mama, you’ve got a little ginger.’
“Trust me, I was shocked too. I can’t count how many times I had to explain he wasn’t adopted, wasn’t my stepson, and wasn’t albino. That I was his mom – not the aunt, Godmother, or the nanny.”
‘He was 6 months old and only 9 pounds. I am a living nightmare. They knew it was all a tremendous f*ck up. They knew he was like this because of them.’
“I got the call around 3:30 a.m. I spent 9 months preparing for that call. 9 months worth of nights obsessively checking the volume on the phone, making sure it was charged, that it was close by, that I hadn’t somehow missed any calls. Well I got my call. Loud and clear.”
‘When they first came out, their hair was fluorescent yellow. I’m talking bright NEON yellow. If you could have seen my eyes the moment I met them for the first time!’
“She was laid on my chest immediately. I couldn’t even say anything at first because her hair was shocking for me to look at! My other two girls were born with dark brown hair. This little girl? I mean it was glowing!”
‘Our 2-year-old son was completely normal, healthy child. He would trip and fall a lot, but we never thought anything of it. He was not fine, would never be fine, and our life would forever be changed.’
“I remember him saying over and over again, ‘Mommy, I can’t walk’ in the waiting room. Never did it occur to me this was a problem that couldn’t be fixed. He had been a perfectly healthy 2-year-old just hours before.”
‘She took her last breath. I felt her soul leave her body. She made me promise I would be OK. Armed with a map and her ashes, I set off on a journey of a lifetime.’
“She stared off into the distance, and then turned back to me and smiled. She told me, ‘I want you to go. You need to go. You need to be out there… Nature is your cathedral.’ I will never forget those words.”
‘Going through one miscarriage is traumatic enough, but going through 7 total losses was life shattering for our family.’
“Coming home and seeing the blood trail into the bathroom, the rags I tried to use to clean it up before we left, my daughter’s toys in the bathroom while she was crying and asking me if ‘mommy okay?,’ feeling like I caused her trauma; I had SO much guilt.”
