“‘It makes sense now.’ I asked him what he was talking about. ‘My sister,’ he said. ‘It makes sense why she’s gone. Now we know. We finally have an answer.”
‘He started talking to me, his lips were moving but I couldn’t hear any words. Slowly, everything began to get darker until I emerged into complete darkness.’
‘A close friend was utterly devastated she was going to have a C-section. I wasn’t the right person to have that conversation with.’: Mom of triplets talks loving your body after infertility struggles
“I was 105 pounds when I found out I was pregnant with triplets. My body stretched and stretched. To be honest, my only thought was, ‘You get to have a baby!’”
‘Everyone was telling me something was WRONG with my baby and I had to FIX him. So, I OBSESSED about it. Oh, holy night, guys. ENOUGH.’
“I sound harsh, but can we stop? I was that mom, too. With the busy fingers. Googling all the things that could possibly be wrong with my child.”
‘The phone rang with a call that turned my life upside down. It BROKE ME. I thought I had moved on, turns out I was wrong.’
“I naively thought, ‘not us!’ Here we are in the middle of a story I could never have imagined. They were my perfect storm.”
‘I let out a loud cry and immediately the words ‘I’M GOING TO BE A MOM’ poured out. My husband was in the other room and screamed ‘WHAT!’ We sobbed for hours. We couldn’t believe it.’
“I will never forget the moment our doctor told us. I was terrified what his next response would be. What happened? I broke down in tears. I was a healthy 26 year old. I could not understand.”
‘I stood beside her while she birthed my son. It’s not lost on us she broke her own heart to complete ours.’: Family adopts child from biological mother they met that day
“‘You can touch him if you want.’ I could not believe the strength she had. Not only the strength to push out an almost 10-pound baby, but the strength to watch as that baby was placed into my arms, wheeled out of her room, and into the room where my husband waited. We are holding the child she delivered and calling him our son.”
‘I would think, ‘I have time for me later. It’s their time now.’ The doctor confirmed I wasn’t dying ‘at that moment’ and sent me home. I laid across the receptionist’s desk sobbing, begging them to help me.’
“Looking back, I saw it coming but thought I could power through it. Well, even the strong need a break, and because I wasn’t taking one, my body did the work for me. It was a slow-moving storm that turned into a hurricane, and I went down. Hard.”
‘I thought I had a clogged milk duct. ‘Ash, go get it checked out. What will it hurt?’: Mom receives cancer diagnosis after thinking she had a clogged milk duct
“I thought it was a clogged milk duct because milk shot out when they did the mammograms. I received the terrifying phone call nobody ever wants to receive. ‘Are you in a safe place to talk?’ I hung up the phone, losing my breath. ‘Stay with me. Stay right here with me.'”
‘For over three years we tried to get to you. Appointment after appointment, shot after shot, tear after tear.’
“Right now I’m looking forward to the sleepless nights, the running late to school or practices, the bedtime struggles followed up by sweet prayers, and the constant laundry pile up.”
‘What should we do now? Adopt a kid or something?’ My chin dropped to the floor. Our family had JUST gotten our heads back above water.’: Couple anxiously waits to adopt son, ‘let’s freaking do it’
“My first response as a rational, responsible wife and mother-of-2 was, ‘HELL NO we should not.’ It sounded too expensive, too risky and too… much. Then my cell phone rang. With caution in her voice, she told me about an 18-month-old little boy, whose mom had unexpectedly passed away, after he was born 10 weeks too early. I am nothing if I’m not a people pleaser. This whole thing seemed too on-the-nose, too predestined, to ignore.”