234 results for tag: Share Your Story
One day life for our growing family seemed perfect. Being 39 weeks pregnant, we decided to take a family day to make memories together before becoming a family of four. We anticipated big changes ahead for our family and wanted to make the most of the moments beforehand.
The next day, we found out that something unexplainable and incomprehensible had happened.
We delivered our 39 week son, stillborn. Devastated and confused was only the beginning of the mountain of feelings we were confronted with. We were left sifting through the cobwebs of emotions, trying to discern how to hold onto hope in the darkest of seasons. We ...
I remember talking to a friend after my first loss, wondering aloud if I would always tell people when they asked how many children I had, that I had one in heaven. She told me, “I am sure when you have one on your hip, and one grabbing your leg, that you won’t feel like you need to tell people.”
It was intended to comfort, but she was wrong. My hope babies, are all a part of our family in both my mind and my heart. They left much too quickly, and the scars I had on my heart remain. Scars from two losses in a row and a third a few years later, from the callous things people said to me, and from trying to pretend to be okay for too long until ...
When we found out we were pregnant with our third child, we were over the moon. Being ever the planner, I immediately began to envision how this new one would fit into our lives. At our 20 week ultrasound we found out we were having a girl. We brought home pink flowers and balloons to surprise our two oldest. The next day I bought her first outfit—a sweet little summer romper.
There were a few small things that came up on the ultrasound that we needed to follow up on, but we were assured that they were nothing major. We went back at 24 weeks and everything seemed to be fine with our little one. Later, I remember so clearly the phone call that ...
I became a Hope Mom on May 2, 2015. It was less than five weeks shy of my due date with our second child, and I found myself headed to the hospital thinking I may have an early delivery. However, when I arrived there, I found out my son was already with Jesus. It’s the kind of thing I thought would never happen to me.
There are many things I am thankful for in the midst of our loss. All the tangible things that the Lord provided in loss, especially the sweet presence of family and friends with the many ways they sought to help us. But above all things, I am eternally grateful for God who is good and promises to work all things ...
Four children had always been the dream. Getting married in my mid 30’s meant that if there was any shot of that dream becoming a reality, my husband and I would need to start having children pretty quickly. About a year after our wedding, we found out we were pregnant with our first son, Rhett. Over the next three years, we added another son, Hayes, to the mix as well as our daughter, Sawyer. Having three kids in under three years was challenging at times, but we loved it. We were eager to add a fourth and final child to our family, but for various reasons and circumstances, it was taking far longer than it had with our first three. However, ...
On the morning of April 23rd, I woke up with this verse in my mind: “All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:16). This verse had special significance to me on that day as my husband and I were headed in for my first prenatal appointment for our third baby. I was about 11 weeks along and was hoping to hear baby’s heartbeat for the first time that day. However, I never heard it.
In the weeks leading up to this appointment, I had started to feel uneasiness that something might be wrong with the pregnancy, even though I really didn’t have any good reason to think ...
After three years of tearful prayers and longing, my husband and I were ecstatic when we learned we were expecting our first child. This baby, a little boy we named Ethan, was a long-awaited answer to many prayers and we praised God for this precious gift. “God is so faithful,” we heard again and again, as we shared the news with the countless friends and family who had been praying for us over the years. God’s faithfulness felt so evident in our lives and our hearts overflowed with gratitude.
At our 20-week anatomy scan, we learned that Ethan displayed a variety of concerning markers. We were later told our sweet baby boy had Full ...
Where do I begin to tell the story of our daughter whose life would come to change our world in so many ways?
In December of 2019, after a difficult few months filled with sickness and the loss of my precious Mommy, I caught the flu. Our oldest son had recently been hospitalized for the same thing, and I had fallen ill caring for him. On Christmas Eve, a friend persuaded me to take a pregnancy test because I was still very sick.
I was in shock when the test was positive. My first thoughts were, “Lord, what are you thinking? Here I am barely holding down the fort and keeping things together with two children. How will I ever ...
April 5 was like any other Easter Sunday. My husband, Jeremy, was drumming, and I was helping lead worship. We arrived early and had two successful services. During the middle of the third service I helped out in the nursery, as it was over-packed with babies, and talked about the precious wee-one growing inside of me. Then, before heading back on stage at the end of service I went to the bathroom and saw it: blood.
I immediately started to freak out as I hadn’t spotted once during the previous ten weeks. I called my doctors office and they were less than helpful, and so Jeremy and I decided to go to the ER right away. The wonderful ...
I was dizzyingly happy to be having identical twins! That highly improbable surprise felt like a special gift from the Lord. Then, just after the babies reached 16 weeks gestation, my doctor detected signs of a rare disease called TTTS—Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. Our sweet boys had begun growing at noticeably different rates. Both were in danger as a result. My husband and I quickly arranged for travel to the nearest hospital specializing in TTTS treatment (and for family to come stay with our two living children). We had no idea how long we might be away, but Day 1 would be a series of tests, starting with the echocardiogram to see ...
