“He always answered my calls. But on Sunday morning, he didn’t. And I just knew he was gone. The only way I can explain this pain is that every cell in my body that created my son is on fire yearning to hold him again. It’s a physical pain only a mother would know. It’s in my bone marrow. Just a deep yearning to touch him, and hold him.”
‘I’m OK mom. I love you too,’ was the last thing he said to me. That was 10:20 on Saturday night.’: Mother tragically loses her ‘best friend’ son to heroin overdose
‘We found out we were pregnant at 17. We were scared. Soon after, we were having a second.’: Woman shares teen pregnancy, co-parenting story, ‘I’m so grateful for my ex’
“We had the ‘million dollar’ family. A boy, a girl, and two high school sweethearts who got married and made it through teen pregnancy. But then, we started to lose the ‘spark.'”
‘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.’
“‘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.”
‘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.'”
‘He was found dead in his bed. At 21, I was pregnant. My ex-boyfriend refused to believe the baby was his.’: Woman realizes recovery is possible after years of addiction
“My depression was spiraling – I started snorting my Adderall and selling it to pay for alcohol. He was older. I had my first serious boyfriend. That is the night my destiny changed.”
‘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.”
‘My eyes darted back and forth as I tried to make sense of where I was. As the fog lifted inside my head, I vaguely remembered bits and pieces of the day before, events that changed my life.’
“While I lay on the operating table, my husband sat in the waiting room, wondering if he would lose all three children and his wife in one day. As he overheard the doctors, one word stood out.”
‘I stood there, firm in my stance, hands on my hips, and let them cry rivers all around me – to the point I became an island. Just a big ole, mean mom island.’
“I sure won’t apologize for it. I had to stop caring whether they were having a good time. I made sure my children knew, once and for all, I am more than a friend.”
‘I can’t! I can’t!’, it hurt so much in my chest at that moment I couldn’t say anything else. We were relieved our little girl’s suffering was about to end, just not the way we had hoped.’
“We were told she would be okay. We were told she was strong. We were led to believe she wouldn’t need to be hospitalized. After being intubated, her father was showering, and I heard what sounded like crackling.”
‘I think he has what mommy has!’ He had white chunks of skin around his fingers and toes’: Mom and son diagnosed with Ichthyosis genetic skin condition
“I looked at the ultrasound picture with his hand balled up in a fist. In that moment, I knew. I felt guilty that my choice to potentially pass on this genetic condition could cause one of my children to have a less than perfect life.”
‘No one will miss you.’ I said goodbye to my kids. Everything went white.’: Woman thanks husband’s ‘mistress’ for ‘saving her’ after abuser attempts to take her life
“He briefly took his hand off of my throat and forced the barrel into my mouth. This was my gun, and I couldn’t stop him from turning it on me. I said goodbye to my kids, in my head. I thought of them coming downstairs to find me dead. His phone buzzed, and he stopped. His mistress was at the house. MPs, SWAT, NCIS, and a case worker. Every military wife in the neighborhood was outside my home, gawking.”
‘I kept bleeding, I had pain. They assured me it would ‘be over soon.’ I just didn’t feel right. I went to another OBGYN, and I got in THAT DAY. It sounded so morbid.’
“I called my husband sobbing, feeling like there was an elephant sitting on my chest. Not only did dissolving a pregnancy, a baby with a heartbeat, feel so morally wrong, I felt like a complete failure. After all, it was absolutely my tubes that were the problem.”
‘My healthy, 39-year-old husband said he felt ‘off.’ In the ER the doctor met me in the hall with tears in her eyes.’: Healthy, 39-year-old husband dies suddenly from ‘catastrophic’ tear in aorta
“Yes. He was gone and I had to sign paperwork to take him off life support. My mom showed up and she was hysterical. I thought to myself, ‘pull yourself together, I need you to be strong and support me.’ She immediately pulled me out into the hall and said, ‘Your sister died last night.’ What.”
‘Things look good, TOO good.’ For the first time ever, I was pregnant! We tried to hide our excitement.’: After adoption, woman discovers she is pregnant with triplets
“We received word that we would be able to adopt! Finally, my dreams were coming true. The night before my first scan, I started bleeding. My dreams of being pregnant were crushed.”
‘I knew something was up. She walked over to the couch, sits down, turns the TV on and I realized. It’s freaking Bachelor season.’
“It’s the grand opening. It’s like a crazy hormonal circus for married chicks. You bet your right freaking leg she can Instafollow, Snapchat and Facestalk 24 random women, working with nothing more than a first name a grid reference of 200 square miles.”
‘When they come out, everyone is gone. ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘I don’t know.’ They both begin to panic.’: Kids without smartphones forced to problem-solve, realize it made them ‘more likely to succeed’
“Their father is nowhere in sight. They have no way of contacting their parents. Michael is getting nervous. ‘We’re going to ask that policeman if we can use his phone,’ she says bravely. They approach the officer. Michael is afraid to speak. So is Emma.”
‘My world was spinning. How is this possible? He didn’t realize it at the time. His heart was a ticking time bomb.’
“He hadn’t been feeling well. First a case of the flu, then what we thought was walking pneumonia. He ate well, worked out, quit smoking. What had he done wrong to deserve this? Little did we know, the journey was about to begin.”
‘When I wiped, I felt something coming out. I got a sick feeling in my stomach – I knew what was about to happen.’: LGBT couple battle infertility, miscarriages, loss of triplets to have rainbow baby
“I laid on that cold bed, put my feet in the stirrups and prayed. After moments that felt like forever, my doctor looked up at me. ‘You’re having twins!’ We were in shock. But seconds later, our doctor had a weird look on her face. She said, ‘Wait! I think I see triplets!’”