Love What Matters

‘Years after meeting my now husband, I got a call from my father’s new wife. ‘Mommy, are you crying?’ I think she’s on to me.’

“I didn’t need him in my life. ‘We can make it on our own,’ she would say. And I did, for so many years. Then, in early July, he called.”

‘We should talk delivery options.’ My response? ‘Um, excuse me?’ My husband’s phone got the call at 10:53.’: Active-duty Army woman gives birth unexpectedly while on vacation

“We were vacationing in Florida. My husband and I are both active-duty Army. I was 35 weeks pregnant when we flew for one last vacation as a family of 3. I had fallen forward on my belly. I was placed on a gurney, in full uniform, and wheeled through the ER. Little did we know, our little man was about to make a big entrance!”

‘I gave my 10-year-old a math test. He spent nearly an hour on it. He worked each problem with intense concentration.’: Mom urges ‘children are so much more than the box we try to mold them into’

“And then, with a deep breath, he handed it to me to be graded. I quickly worked my way through the test and calculated his score. Immediately his eyes filled with tears.”

‘Stop pushing!,’ my doctor said. ‘No time to wait. His heart rate keeps dropping with every push, I cannot let this keep happening.’

“The epidural I was given hours ago never worked, I was feeling every intense pain throughout my labor. I clung to his words.”

‘The doctor has my husband bend over, takes one look and says the words you don’t EVER want to hear. WHAT HAS HAPPENED? We were hiking just weeks ago.’: Woman shocked by husband’s cancer diagnosis, ‘We were so in love’

“We came home and I made him scrambled eggs and toast for dinner. He fell asleep on the chair. About 8:30 or so, I thought WOW he’s been asleep for a while now, and I tried to wake him up.”

‘I’ll never forget walking into the hospital on a cold January night, preparing to give birth for the second time. The nurses buzzed me through the doors, but the atmosphere was anything but celebratory.’

“Strength was required to face the inevitable questions of ‘is this your first pregnancy?’ Or, ‘how many children do you have?’”

‘She’s too confident,’ they whisper to each other. If only they knew she leads with self-assurance to overcome her debilitating self-doubt and social anxiety.’

“‘She’s too unkempt. Kids are not an excuse for looking so ragged,’ they added. ‘She talks and shares her opinion too much.'”

‘Just as I was attempting to fall asleep, I heard my oldest son whimpering in his room. This is so unusual that I raced down the hallway to check on him.’

“I cried a little bit thinking about my dad and how much I miss him and wish he were here. I fell asleep for a bit, but a weird dream jolted me awake. There were some creaks. Then, there was silence.”

‘Nothing prepared me for my wife’s cesarean. NOTHING. Birth was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.’: Husband praises ‘stoic, strong, powerful, dedicated’ wife for ‘bringing children into the world’

“Reaching from a gaping hole in my beautiful wife’s stomach was the head of a bloody, powder white, child-like creature. I recall Mel lying naked in front of the doctors; her stomach like a deflated balloon. But nothing shocked me as much as the next day. She was the most badass person I knew.”

‘I go from loving him to hating his guts over a period of 24 hours. I never thought that would ever happen to us. Ever.’: Wife talks ‘seeing the bright side’ in your marriage and falling back in love

“Some people say they loved each other MORE after having children. I think that’s surely got to be a crock.”

‘When people ask me why I would ever do something like this, I have a simple answer – ‘I have a uterus, it works, I’m not using it, so why not let someone else who doesn’t have that same ability?’

“I was supposed to be the one to bring them fertility, and yet here we were, almost a year later and nothing.”

‘We heard this loud, echoing bang above us in the bathroom. Thirty seconds later, this scream came from upstairs. I can still hear it to this day. There she was, on the bathroom floor.’

“My best friend entered before me. She begged me not to come in. I did anyways – I had to see for myself. All of her shoes were neatly lined up next to the foot of the bed. Her clothes were hung up, and her beauty products were organized.”

‘I was starting to look pregnant, my boobs were huge, and I welcomed the nausea. The image appeared on the screen. I looked intently and finally asked, ‘where’s the heartbeat?!’

“I started laughing, mostly because it couldn’t possibly be true – I felt pregnant, I looked pregnant, and a week before, things were fine. I began sobbing.”

‘Before the doctor punctured my belly, my husband looked to me. ‘Do you wanna know?’ My fairytale pregnancy was being ripped apart.’: Mom’s devastation over shocking Lymphatic Malformation diagnosis leads to ‘pure bliss’

“I had no clue what to feel. I was so devastated that something was wrong with our perfect little baby. The only thing running through my mind was, ‘Please don’t take my baby.’ I never once cried seeing how severe his malformation was. I just kept thinking, ‘That that’s my baby boy. I was so in love.’”

‘She told me I ‘look like a damn banana’ and needed to go to the ER right away. I had been fighting horrible flu-like symptoms for almost a week leading up to this.’

“They sent me home with strict orders not to take my birth control anymore. I wish I had known this was possible. I met with the doctor and got the scariest news of my life.”

‘I was standing in line. An older gentleman said, ‘Why are you wearing that rainbow shirt? Are you some sort of fa***t?’: Man encounters homophobia for wearing rainbow shirt

“This man then goes on to mumble homophobic slurs to me, the whole time I’m waiting in line. I ignore him, pay for my food, and start to walk away. I then notice his card gets declined.”

‘She said I’d be a great foster mom. ‘Me?! Isn’t that for young people? We are grandparents, for goodness sakes!’: Grandparents take leap of faith and become foster parents

“We haven’t located any family.’ ‘When will we get her?’ ‘Tonight. Now.’ At 11:30 p.m., we brought our foster daughter, Laycee, into our home. Six months later, we got another call. ‘Mrs. Morgan? We have a 3-year-old little boy in the PICU. He’s been here 6 months and needs a home.”

‘She calmly said, ‘You’re a complicated case.’ I replied, ‘I know,’ with laughter. ‘No, the babies, this is a really complicated pregnancy.’ In that moment, my world shattered. I knew.’

“‘Are you sure your OB has heard the heartbeat on the Doppler? Maybe she is just hiding!’ I knew then, they were buying time.”

‘He looked at me screaming, helpless because he felt they were torturing him. All mommy could do was hold him tight, but not stop them. The room caved in on me. I wasn’t ready.’

“I took him to his pediatrician with no knowledge of what was to happen later that evening. The doctor walked in, looked at his stomach bulging out on the left side, and told me to go straight to the Children’s Hospital.”

‘That baby in the photo, the one you can’t see. The one who’s all snuggled up inside her mama. She did not survive.’

“I had been in the hospital for a week being monitored. I was in the safest place that I could be and under constant supervision. And then, it happened.”

‘What’s wrong? Is something wrong?’ He didn’t answer. ‘Chad, seriously, tell me what’s wrong.’ He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and leaned in.’: Widow shares the ‘best birthing story of them all’

“He shot back with a look on his face I had never seen before. Fear, maybe. Shock. Panic. Oh God, what was it? The blood left his face. He was pale. Almost confused.”

‘I couldn’t catch my breath. I tried to call my husband, but I was shaking so much I couldn’t even hit the call button on my phone.’

“Things escalated so fast. But, truthfully, I didn’t have a choice.”

‘Before kids you sleep in. After kids you’re whacked in the face at 5 a.m. because you’re someone’s little breakfast making machine because sleep is overrated.’

“Before kids, you make out in your big bed, have a little nasty time and fall asleep lovingly in each other’s arms. After kids, you promise you’ll meet up later and lock the bathroom door for some adult time, but instead you both fall asleep snoring.”

‘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.’

“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.”