1104 results for author: Ashlee Schmidt
My name is Brandi Popke, and I am Hope Mom to Madison and Hannah. Madison would be 12 this year and Hannah would be 10. Both of my girls were born full term, but only lived a few hours due to Polycystic Kidney Disease. It was just this last year that I learned about the Hope Mommies community and the support it offers on social media. I had no idea the amount of support was so great until I went to the retreat in March.
I signed up for the retreat as soon as I came across the information online—completely terrified and excited at the same time. Other than my husband and a few loving friends along the way, I have traveled this journey of ...
I still remember when we announced we were pregnant. We were so excited and blessed to be pregnant with our third child on earth. This would be our fifth time being pregnant. In between our two living children, Addison and Austen, we had lost two babies in a row—10 weeks with the first and 5 weeks with the second. We had experienced losses, so we knew how blessed we were to be pregnant again. My whole pregnancy was going so well. I decided not to do the genetic testing, so instead we were scheduled for an ultrasound. I was 21 weeks. We were so nervous, but our nerves quickly went away when we found out our baby was just perfect. Our baby was growing ...
It’s not something you sign up for, or even a thing that passes through your mind when you make a commitment of faith to leave all and follow His plan for your life. When I moved to Bucharest, Romania to work as a missionary with orphan kids, I couldn’t have ever imagined where my life would take me. Would I have still come, If I knew?
I can still remember being led down a long white hall, the kind from communist times, which is no surprise since Romania has recently come out of all that. I was led into a hospital room that seemed darker than usual. I was left alone for the first time since I found out that my baby girl’s heart was no longer ...
My husband, Ron, and I have been married for 14 years. We first met in 2003, and we knew instantly that God had brought us together. We were married four months later. We had discussed children and always said it was in God’s hands if or when we had any. When Ron was 18 he had a brain tumor. He had surgery, chemo and radiation—and is completely healed. Because of the chemo and radiation, he was told that chances were pretty high that he wouldn’t be able to have children.
Fast forward eight years, and I wasn’t surprised that we hadn’t conceived yet. We just assumed it was because of the cancer. My sweet husband knew it was a dream of ...
I have desired to share my story for a while now, but truth be told, I have also been very hesitant because I feel like my story may be too hard for even some loss mothers to bare. Rather than leaving it to my own judgement, I want to choose to let the Lord do with my story as He pleases. Ultimately, my story, our stories, are not our own. They are His to do as He pleases with them.
My pregnancy with Katherine was my third. It was also my happiest pregnancy. I had more joy being pregnant with my daughter than I had experienced with my first two children. Maybe, it was because I was a seasoned mom and had confidence that I could take care of a third ...
It can be overwhelming for mothers to decide how is best for a Hope Baby to be celebrated. As Hope Moms begin to ponder on how they would like to honor and remember their babies in heaven on October 15, one Hope Mom graciously shares with us multiple ways she honors her Hope Baby on important dates and in her daily life in hopes of giving some ideas:
“I sat there all alone waiting for my husband to pull the car around to the bench I was sitting on outside the hospital the day after our son, Hayes, was born. I looked on as other women were also waiting for their husbands to pick them up. There was one glaring difference between those women and ...
On June 13, 2010, I discovered that I was pregnant with our third child in three years. There was a great deal of shock and restlessness as we began to prepare our home for three babies. My first two pregnancies were textbook and without nausea or complications. So, as my third pregnancy began and the sickness ensued, it was even harder for me to accept that this was God’s plan for me. However, God laid Jeremiah 33:3 on my heart and began to transform my thoughts to His thoughts—“Call to Me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” We began to digest the reality, and we were ...
On December 16, 2015, my husband and I found out we were pregnant with our second baby. From the first positive pregnancy test, our minds and hearts began to fill with ideas of our new little one—how much we would love this new baby, the kind of sibling he or she would be to our daughter, and how he or she would fit into our family.
Around 6 weeks pregnant, we saw our baby on ultrasound, and the doctor reported that everything looked good. Then came the exhaustion, nausea, and vomiting. Everything seemed to be following the same pattern as my previous pregnancy; so, none of this felt surprising.
On January 28, I went in for a routine ...
My story can be hard to write. It’s been so hard to grieve and harder to even process. To say the last year and a half has been hard would be an extreme understatement. But, I know my story is still being written, and it will glorify God. I pray it already has. So, I write it out.
My husband and I got married on the beach June 7, 2008. It was perfect. We planned fun vacations all over the world as our work schedules would allow for five years before deciding to start a family. We met our first little love, Callie Siena, in July 2014. She is pure joy, and I can’t imagine life or our family without her. Since we ...
In March 2017, Hope Moms from all across the country, and even from across the globe, gathered in Giddings, TX for the annual Hope Mommies Retreat. Together, they spent the weekend sharing the stories of their precious babies, and finding that Christ can indeed comfort the brokenhearted, often through the hands and tears of another sufferer along the way. The theme of the 2017 retreat was "A Beautiful Inheritance." In this mini series, Shannon Owen, recaps her messages from the retreat in order to give us a greater picture of the beautiful inheritance we have been given in Christ.
We can’t end this series without talking heaven.
It’s ...
