“A nurse said, ‘Do you want a picture?’ I abruptly said, ‘No.’ I was trying to erase the past 6 hours from my memory. I didn’t even know if my baby would survive. Why would I want a picture or anything that would make me feel attached to this little creature? Baby B was barely alive.”
‘I’m going to throw up.’ He looked like an unfamiliar creature. Everything I expected went out the window.’: Woman gives birth to twin preemies at 24 weeks, ‘We knew this would be the greatest fight of our lives’
‘Why don’t you lose weight?’ Me, unimpressed by an egotistical doctor: ‘Or you could just do your job.’: Woman with cervical cancer, PCOS beats infertility, ‘Always fight for yourself because you are worth it’
“I quickly became friends with Wanda, the lovely trans-vaginal ultrasound wand I had a hot date with every morning. ‘We found something on your cervix.’ My period stopped. I almost fainted on the subway on my way to work. I started gaining weight. I was told I likely would never naturally have children. Well, f**k.'”
‘No cuddles today,’ I was told 3 days in a row. I was nothing but a milk machine. It was torture.’: Woman gives birth to twin preemies, ‘I was humbled by our time in the NICU’
“I watched her lips turn blue again. ‘Breathe baby girl. Please.’ We were force-feeding them to keep them alive. They poked Hazel over and over, trying to find a vein, finally landing on one in her head. I was horrified. ‘How in the world are we all going to survive this?’”
‘The doctor said, ‘Cut off his connection.’ He urged me to stop the blood flow to my twin’s heart. My organs shut down. I was bleeding out internally.’: Twin preemie warriors beat death multiple times, ‘Never doubt a mother’s intuition’
“I woke up feeling uneasy. As I drove in, I just knew something was off. The ultrasound tech was silent and white as a ghost. ‘Is everything okay?’ She replied, ‘You need to wait for the doctor,’ and walked out of the room. At just 25 weeks, the twins were both dying and on their way. The OB-GYN whisked me to the ER. ‘Jeremiah is not big enough to survive. You have to leave him in!’ The entire day, I had been bleeding out internally and no one knew.”
‘Her body hit the floor. ‘If you want to say goodbye to your daughter, you’d better come now.’ She’d only had a bad cold the day before.’: Mom dies suddenly of congenital cardiac arrythmia, leaves behind 3 toddlers
“Brittany called to say she had a bad cold. I told her to get some rest. We said ‘I love you’ and I told her the twins were doing fine. At 8:30 a.m. we received a call from her husband. ‘It’s Britt! They’re lifeflighting her.’ At the hospital, she was just lying there, the ventilator breathing for her. ‘Please come back to us. Your babies need you.’ I held her hand. They checked her system for diet pills.”
‘I was 6 weeks postpartum from a pregnancy that ended with me giving the baby up. ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I sat, tears rolling down my face.’: Surrogate says ‘there is no greater joy than making somebody else a mama’
“As it turns out, you can’t just walk into a fertility clinic and get knocked up with someone else’s baby on a whim. Next thing I knew, I was getting embryos transferred to my uterus from a couple I had only met on Skype. The intended mother stood at the foot of my hospital bed with one hand over her mouth. She held her breath as they lay his newborn body on my chest.”
‘Let’s get it over with. Your twins will be born and die.’ She denied me pain medication. I was banned from seeing them because it was a ‘waste of time.’: Mom births twin preemies after pressure to let them die, ‘They can and WILL thrive’
“21 weeks pregnant with my twins, I noticed a tiny smear of pink blood in the bathroom. The doctor spoke cold and matter-of-factly. ‘This is going to be quick. Your babies will be born and die.’ She wouldn’t let me hear their heartbeats. ‘I refuse to start labor again.’ As long as they were inside me, they were safe. When a new doctor randomly walked in, were gone in seconds. I yelled to my sister, ‘Call my husband!’ We were racing down the highway to save their lives.”
‘It is so unlikely, you have better odds at winning the lotto.’ Before the tests came back, I knew something was wrong.’: Twins battle Leukemia together, ‘I‘d be a liar if I said it gets easier, you just get better at dealing with it’
“We woke to my son crying and covered in vomit. The next day, his brother was the same and couldn’t keep anything down. We thought it was a stomach bug, but it kept happening. ‘Both your boys have leukemia.’ It felt like being stuck in some kind of messed up Groundhog Day where all your nightmares are real. I felt helpless.”
‘My hubby snapped this photo while I fell asleep sitting up, breastfeeding our 2-week-old twins. It’s the most unflattering image, but it makes me proud.’: Mom to twins reminds us how ‘amazing’ the female body can be
“Exhausted doesn’t fully describe this photo. I was sneaking in a nap while healing from 2 types of births: Baby A vaginal, Baby B cesarean. My body was working non-freaking-stop to make all the milk for these boys. People ask, ‘How do you do it with 4 kids?’ I shrug and respond, ‘Moms always figure it out.’ Even when we have no clue how, we make it work. We’ve got a drive within us that is unstoppable. The funny thing is, I’d do it all over again.”
‘She started hysterically laughing. ‘So far I’ve found 3.’ After already having twins! Complete shock.’: Mother births twins, then triplets, then twins again, ‘We were completely dumbfounded’
“It was EXTREMELY rare. After hearing the news, we walked across the street and got pedicures, because what else do you do when you find out you’re pregnant with triplets? After already having twins! I don’t think we said a word to each other the entire time – we were completely dumbfounded.”
