Natalie was 19 when she got pregnant. Plans to marry her boyfriend quickly fell through and she was left with a choice to keep the baby or place the baby in a closed adoption. With her parents’ help, she chose adoption. And then she found out it was actually twins. And that there might be […]
by Allison Crockett Anna Karenina. Words synonymous with Russian winters, trains, adultery, lavish dresses and furs, princes and princesses. Or perhaps the mind jumps quickly to Tolstoy and his ability to take a few simple themes and turn them into 800+ page novels. Whatever your initial thoughts are, they probably did not involve the shaping […]
I knew that it wouldn’t do me any good to say, well, I’m going to have a baby and then I’ll figure out my life because I’d already made pretty much made a solid decision that I was going to place him for adoption and I didn’t want to put my life on hold any longer.
If you really understand what is going on for them, then you can actually take better care of them. It’s about being open to what people are experiencing and not having an agenda for them, or making assumptions about them, or these plans for them, or clearly they would want this, this or this. It isn’t clear. I have to set down my expectations and my baggage around anybody else’s issues as best I can and be open to what they need.
by JoAnna Donkin, as told to Lizzie Heiselt (listen to JoAnna read the essay here) A healthy baby has 10 little fingers and 10 little toes, 2 little eyes and one little nose. But I was not going to get a healthy baby. An ultrasound at 11 weeks hinted that something could be wrong. And after weeks […]
In this week’s mini episode JoAnna reads her essay about her baby Levi, who, after being diagnosed with trisomy-13 at 18 weeks, beat the odds and was born alive at 35 weeks gestation. Levi may have lead a tiny and quiet life, but his existence was like a firework that bursts onto the scene leaving wonder […]
Bente kept a journal when she was growing up in which she wrote that she would have 12 kids: 2 boys, then 2 girls, then 2 boys, and on and on. A couple of decades later we meet up with her and find that things went surprisingly well for her.
by Sarah Israelsen When I became a mom I knew how to take care of a human. I knew how to change diapers, feed a baby, hold him, comfort him, and put him to sleep. I knew how to smile, coo, give attention, stimulate, and love a child. And I thought I could be what […]
