“To be honest, I had already suspected it, but to hear it from his mouth made it real. The night we celebrated his life, I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. It felt like a complete surprise, until I went for the ultrasound. The screen flashed. My heart literally skipped a beat. July 27th was the due date. Jesse’s birthday.”
‘I remember the specific moment he wasn’t going to make it. The nurse placed her hand over my back. I shrieked. She knew what I knew. I fought back every tear trying to escape my terrified eyes.’ Woman surprised with pregnancy after husband’s death
‘How to survive when your children won’t go the f*** to sleep.’
Step 7. Don’t close your eyes to make your baby close theirs. I promise they’re still open.
‘Dr. Diane, something is very wrong with Elizabeth.’ I watched in horror as her dad carried her down the hallway. She looked stiff. What in the world? My stomach sank.
“‘It’s acute flaccid myelitis.’ ‘WHAT?!’ – I nearly spit out my drink. This was almost a myth. A pediatric rarity. ‘The rare polio-like illness that’s affecting kids across the country’. What was it doing in my office – heck, in my city…. in my state?”
‘The purple blanket isn’t yours. Even though it covered your car seat when you left the hospital. Even though you sleep with it every night. It’s not yours.’
“The preeclampsia had its way. She came early, and she came silently. The purple blanket never touched her fragile skin.”
‘I was just raped thousands of miles away from home as a 15-year-old, and I was scared.’
“I kept quiet about the incident out of sheer terror. Raising a girl is so terrifying when you’ve seen the ugliest parts of what being a girl has to offer at times.”
‘We forget what it is to go into labor. To be wracked with pain so excruciating we can’t fathom ever withstanding it. A mama is meant to forget.’
“We are mamas, and we are meant to forget.”
‘People were trying to push me away from breastfeeding. We need LESS of the fear mongering.’
“Not once did I have someone tell me, ‘Just push through! You’ve got this.’ It was always, ‘I wasn’t able to either. Just give her formula.'”
‘There’s so much I didn’t know. Had I known, I would have tried to prepare myself more.’
“I didn’t know that night, as we rocked back and forth in that cozy, worn rocker that it would be the last time I rocked you to sleep.”
‘Co-sleeping and bed sharing are wonderful. If you feel worried about these things because people make you feel this way, don’t.’
“These people don’t come home with you, don’t sleep in your bed, and they aren’t your baby, so their opinion is invalid.”
‘It’s the BEST THING I’VE DONE YET! She forever wants to be held, and now I get my break.’
“Let me tell you, it WORKS!”
