“I woke up at 1 a.m. on our wedding anniversary, and felt like I needed to go to the bathroom. This wasn’t unusual. I had been pregnant for over a month. But something didn’t feel right.”
‘The doctor starts clicking away on the ultrasound machine, trying to get a better look. ‘Well, you are pregnant.’ He said it looked ‘good.’ Then, he went silent.’
‘This led us to a dark, silent hospital room on Halloween. We were supposed to be prepping a nursery and picking out names.’
“Instead, we hastened to name an already much-loved child that was not ours to keep. Every alarm bell in my body went off.”
‘On our wedding day, by the end of the night, he was drained. The morning after, he slept in late because he was so exhausted. His heart was racing, he was shaking.’
“I could see the fear in his eyes looking back at me from the mirror the second I approached him.”
‘My uterus has not shrinked back yet. The sagging makes my C-section scar hurt.’ Triplet mom gets REAL about her postpartum belly
“I am surprised it has not gotten smaller since my last picture. Kind of disappointing, I must admit, and I am not too happy to share this picture.”
‘To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them.’
“Though we would have paid any ransom to have her back, any price in the world, this disease would not let her go until she was gone.”
‘After my boys were born, there were appointments. There were regular pokes and prods. Their well-being was front and center. Then there was me.’
“No one poked me. No one prodded. No one checked my stitches, my healing, or my sanity. We slip through the cracks. We become background noise.”
‘I hadn’t realized this Christmas was the last one we’d spend as a whole family. After dinner, my phone rang. Concerned, I answered, and my world was rocked once more.’
“I was crocheting, like how we spent most nights. It was my mom, who never called me this time of evening as she worked night shift and would normally still be sleeping.”
‘Even if she has 1,000 friends commenting every single day how perfect she is, it means nothing if the man at home makes her feel worthless.’
“A woman who is built up at home never has to go searching for it on the internet.”
‘I remember our first marital therapy session vividly. I sat separated from Ryan and the tension between us felt so strong. We were two hurting people only hurting each other.’
“I had so much I wanted to say to Ryan, many things that I had said to him before, but saying them in front of someone felt like they would be heard. But that day my heart ultimately exploded, literally, in the form of tears and anger.”
‘At 38 weeks pregnant with my second child, I met a friend for lunch. What I didn’t know was my daughter had actually died earlier that morning.’
“To the friends who said, ‘Maybe it’s not her time yet,’ or ‘Things happen for a reason,’ or ‘Just stay strong,’ it’s OK. Really. I hope you never learn from experience.”
