“These days, I feel lucky if you want to be held for more than a few seconds. You are so busy exploring and playing. You already feel the need to be independent. To do it yourself. To have things your way. Your little baby features are fading away, and I can suddenly see a big boy peeking through.”
“I want you to know about the nights I lay awake, helpless and shaking. I want to tell my story of our family, who fiercely love someone being attacked and can do very little about it.”
“Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. It’s unbearable to think about. It has always been the 3 of us that make sure the other is okay.”
“The news rocked my parents’ world. I was smart in school and dumb in love. I enrolled in community college, worked a full-time job and went to class at night. I married a man who had been my friend from the start. He too was at the hospital the night my daughter was born. When my daughter was 11, my husband adopted her. The paperwork was the thing that gave her his name, though she already had his heart.”
“You stroked those itty-bitty fingers and toes. You talked about those eyes. You told me my baby was beautiful, although the rest of the world would likely have disagreed. As you placed my breathless baby into the palms of my hands, I too became breathless.”
“I messaged a local Facebook moms’ group to ask if anyone still had their decorations up. Immediately I was flooded with messages. I have been in tears all day.”
“You see, while you’re out working that day job, she’s home doing a job too. One that comes with big responsibility so that you can be at that day job with the peace of mind your babies get to be home.”
“The palms of my hands were sweaty as I interlaced my fingers with Ryan’s. It felt like it was taking forever for her to share with us what she was seeing in my womb.”
“A huge splash of fluid hit the curtain in my face. All I could think was, ‘I’m going to die right here. I was born on this day, and I’m going to die on this day giving birth.'”
“When people find out about our costumes the first thing out of their mouths is ‘why?’ I typically give a throw-away answer like ‘because I’m crazy’ or ‘because I don’t sleep,’ but that’s not the full truth.”
