The night we came home with our baby I couldn’t stop crying. We were surrounded by family who wanted to meet him and they told us to go nap. I tried to sleep, but every time I nearly fell asleep, my body jolted me awake. I was having a panic attack, something I’ve dealt with…

Nothing feels more lonely than being a mother in the maternity ward alone while your baby is in the NICU. —Ann Arbeau

When people find out you’re pregnant, the default reaction is celebration, congratulations, excitement. And they expect you to be excited, too. But when you’ve experienced pregnancy loss—one, or two, or ten—that excitement is clouded over by a deep fear. By anxiety, and the constant resistance to let your hopes get too high, because you know…

I remember the day C came home and declared it was “baby making time!” We whooped and danced around the kitchen in our tiny North End flat. Finally, he had secured a permanent teaching position, the condition he needed in order to feel ready for parenthood. Both in our early thirties by this time, we…

I was also someone who dreamed of being a mother. I am a caregiver at heart and always was, long before I ever gave birth. I always felt that I was made for motherhood. But then I got pregnant and it was so much harder and lonelier than I ever imagined, I questioned everything. I…

“Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home,” I sing as I jiggle my six-week-old baby, hoping that it won’t be another long, sleepless night for the two of us. Leah has colic and my singing and jiggling is part of our nightly routine, my attempt to soothe her. Baths make her cry…

I had devoted great practice to acutely listening to my body. Something was wrong. Every cell in my body began to scream of death. My body withered in pain, with no relief. Pressure building to a point of no reprieve. With every blink of my eyes, darkness wrapped around me. Mere seconds, seeming to last…

When we started trying to get pregnant, I was told not to worry. I was young, healthy and it would just take a bit of time. Nothing seemed to work and we started on our journey of fertility treatments. After surgery and medication I got pregnant right away. I was so happy and felt like…

I hesitated to take part in this project because I have actively stuffed those intensely painful emotions so deep down inside I partly felt a sense of being grateful that that “part” was over. However, there is equally a lingering sense of sadness for the new mom I sometimes catch a glimpse of in photos…

Throughout the many months my husband and I spent trying to conceive, my two full-term pregnancies, the time surrounding a miscarriage in between those two successful pregnancies, and every year of parenting since, I’ve experienced a veritable rollercoaster of emotions. But when I reflect on those years of my life that I’ve been all too…