“He may never be able to verbally communicate, and I can say with confidence – I’m okay with that. Cue the ‘gasps.'”
‘Will he ever talk? This is the question I get asked most often about my son.’
‘We had a family movie night. Well, let me take that back. My family had a movie night, while I sat on the floor trying to match the right lids to the right markers and put books back into bins.’
“Then I got up and made brownies, because I felt like brownies would make my family happy. Then I did the dishes because, well, I felt like I needed to do the dishes. Then I served everyone the brownies. Then I waited and collected their dirty brownie dishes.”
‘You are too skinny, not tall enough, and you have never delivered a baby before. You will have an unsuccessful triplet pregnancy.’ That’s what my doctor told me at my first ultrasound.
“’We need to get in the OR now,’ my doctor said. Then she turned to my mom. ‘You need to find Ryan. And pray. She has lost a lot of blood.’”
‘At 80 and terminally ill, she was self-conscious of how she looked. ‘They’ll think you’re a rich, eccentric old Hamptons lady,’ I told her. Having aspired to be one, she was happy with that.’
“We wanted to give her one ‘last hurrah’ before the end of her life. A police officer told my father of a place he just HAD to take my mother. ‘People find it only if they’re lost. It will remind her of Ireland.’ I pulled over. There, laid out, was horizon as far as her eyes could see. She was seeing the ocean she had crossed all those years earlier, for the very last time.”
‘Deep down I knew I made the wrong call. His foster trauma was inconvenient, and I pushed it aside for my ease. I completely dismissed him.’
“Once my house had fallen quiet, the interaction at the park came flooding back. Tears filled my eyes as I pictured him under the tree all by himself. I felt mad at myself.”
‘They don’t really feel pain anymore.’ WHAT?! The hardest thing we had to do was say goodnight, and walk out of her room that night.
“We made a decision to keep mom safe. Will they check on her enough? Will she be afraid? We all kissed her goodnight, and headed out the door. None of us looked back. What if we made a mistake? I couldn’t breathe.”
‘The medics arrived, and he couldn’t hide his pain. My husband extended his hand, looked him straight in the eye and quietly said, ‘Thanks for the ride.’: Widow of police officer shares touching thanks to everyday heroes
“It was then that I saw it. My husband was a hero. In that moment I witnessed in his deepest, darkest despair, yet he still did the right thing.”
‘Being a single parent is tough. However, I will say being solo with young kids is a pretty significant opposite-sex attention grabber.’
“Daughter #1 – ‘Are you married?’ Daughter #2 – ‘Don’t ask her! You are supposed to look to see if she has a RING on her hand, right dad?!'”
‘What is going on?’ My husband looked like he’d seen a ghost. The doctor yelled: ‘Get her into the ER, STAT!’: Woman overcomes years of infertility through surrogacy
“’Something wrong with the machine?,’ I asked after 20 minutes of silently looking at the ultrasounds. ‘No dear, I think there is something very wrong with you.’”
‘From the very beginning I knew something wasn’t right with me. I never got married and never had children. I kept using drugs to forget the pain I felt in my soul.’
“It was always someone else’s fault. My father was a drug addict and died of AIDS on my 20th birthday as a result of his heroin addiction, so I blamed him. I was never willing to take responsibility for myself and my decisions.”
How An Ear-Piercing Gone Wrong Allowed Me To Teach My Daughter About Consent
“Our daughter’s been asking to get her ears pierced for months. Once there, she changed her mind. She kept looking at me, apologizing. It didn’t feel right. My dad instinct kicked in.”
Elderly couple holding hands during Hurricane Florence evacuations proves true love withstands all storms
“My tears are flowing.”
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. My body had absorbed one of my twins. My womb was a temporary coffin.’: Mom loses twin son in harrowing pregnancy, says she’ll ‘always have a place for him’ in her heart
“Over the next 4 months, I was scanned every 2 weeks. I had to slowly watch my son break down. First, his little eyes, nose, and beautiful lips became harder to see. Then his tiny fingers and toes started to fuse together. Finally, it got to the point where he lost all of his features. It was torture. I just wanted the day to come so I could get him out and grieve. But I also didn’t want to give birth because I knew once he was out, he was gone forever.”
‘I got a call from a reporter asking about my ‘Autistic kid’ today. Honestly, I made the same word choices before I had her. It used to make me angry.’
“Audrey isn’t an Autistic kid. Audrey HAS Autism. Autism shouldn’t be an adjective. It’s a noun. It’s a medical diagnosis. It is not the defining descriptor of my child.”
‘WHAT IS THIS?’ My dad got a new credit card, he thought it was gonna be a tiny picture of him like the previous card he had.’: Daughter shares dad’s hilarious credit card mix-up
“So he sent them a picture of him and then…”
‘I was shocked. My 2-year-old was kissing, hugging, and feeding this baby cow. What an incredible experience to get to witness a calf be born!’
“He was glued watching the farmer pull the calf out. He never moved – just kept his eyes on them. What happened next was one of the most beautiful things I’ve witnessed.”
‘We hear a large fart followed by some plops in the toilet. My son’s face starts to light up and his eyes widen. ‘Wow, did you HEAR THAT MOMMY?’: Mom recalls mortifying experience in public restroom
“This person is clearly in there trying to poo in peace, so I keep telling Luca to just do his business so we can get outta here. ‘But what is the man doing Mommy?’ ‘It’s not a man Luca, it’s a woman. We are in the female toilets.'”
‘I stared at their translucent, 1 pound bodies. Guilt overwhelmed me. Yet, there was no judgement from you, our NICU nurse.’
“At one week old, you approached me with a smile. ‘Are you ready to hold your daughter,’ you asked. Weighing just 16 ounces, I held my child for the first time. Thank you to the nurse who gave me that first milestone.”
‘How could a perfectly healthy baby just stop breathing? How could I lose my baby like that? Why would this happen to me?’
“I turned to check on him and I couldn’t see him breathing, so I placed my hand on his cheek. It was ice cold. I realized instantly he was gone.”
‘Did she just tell me I’m going to have triplets?’ I hung up the phone. I wish we got our fairy tale ending.’: Mother of twins says ‘every ounce of pain has turned into joy’ after losing one child in pregnancy
“‘All 3 of your eggs made it to embryo stage!’ I wish I could tell you that this was it, that we finally had our fairy tale ending. I thought we would get a break, that we had finally ‘arrived.’ I was wrong. I was face down on the floor sobbing. Our Baby C, who we named Charlie, went to Heaven.”
‘You need to go. Be out in nature.’ She took her last breath and vanished into the air. I’ll never forget those words.’: Man’s soulmate dies of cancer, travels the country with her ashes
“My wife knew being out in nature, amongst the wind and the rock, would be my medicine for grief. Two months after she passed, with a map and her ashes, I set off on a journey that would take me 12 weeks, 19,000 miles. I was on my own, but I wasn’t alone. Her urn sat in the passenger seat as she always did. Her spirit was there, guiding and comforting me.”
The Day I Survived The 9/11 Pentagon Attack
“No soldiers deal well with a sucker punch.”
‘HOLY SH*T, we finally did it!’ Wife surprises husband with shocking baby announcement after 3 years of infertility
“She explained it would be extremely hard for me to become pregnant. I broke down in that cold exam room. The only thing in my head was, ‘I can’t have kids. I can’t be a woman for this amazing man who is counting on me.’”
‘I have a good friend who was with her husband from age 18. She found out that, over a year ago, he cheated on her.’: Mom details friend’s ‘life after divorce’
“As soon as I walked in I was asked, ‘Why are you friends with Sarah? She’s gone wild now, she’s got all these tattoos, she dumps her kids so she can go out partying. I heard she’s got another boyfriend already! Those poor kids!’ Because she’s moved on, she was called a sl*t.”
‘I was so unhappy with what I saw. Then I caught my youngest daughter staring at me. All of a sudden, the realization hit me like a load of bricks.’
“I’ve always been ‘tiny’ and never struggled with weight loss, only weight gain. This struggle was so unfamiliar to me, and no amount of clean eating or working out was helping. It was trying to tell me something was wrong, but I ignored it.”