08/21/2026
I was deep in postpartum with two boys fifteen months apart, knee deep in the medical, barely alive.
I had a plan with my first. What I got was an emergency c-section, a week in the NICU, rehospitalization at two months. For months we undressed him to skin and a diaper and laid him on a cold bathroom floor in winter, trying to wake him enough to eat.
Six months later I was pregnant again.
Emergency rooms. Hospitalizations. EEGs. MRIs. Two boys and no answers.
Then my first born choked and went out in an ambulance. That is what finally moved genetics, and they connected us to the only place in the country that specializes in the rare genetic disorder our boys have.
Then our second son had it too. Somewhere in all the specialists, an image showed he had already had a stroke. Nobody could tell us when.
Answers made it heavier. PT, OT, feeding therapy.
And every one of those years I worked. From hospital rooms. Nurses in and out all day, me on a laptop after they left.
I hid in the mother's room pumping because it was the only door I could close. The ventilation carried everything. So I sat in there with the machine running and listened to a grown man tell HR I was the problem.
That was my one silent place.
Then I said yes to a solo trip. No work, no children, no hospital monitors beeping. Until a work text came to my personal phone telling me I didn't have a choice.
After three years of working from hospital rooms. That was the sentence.
That was the day I came up for air. I chose my family.
Fifteen months later. Hosted a retreat in Costa Rica with thirteen women. Built a branding company. Got our boys into a third system after two would not listen. Got baptized.
Six weeks ago my husband had a stroke at 36. He is home because we knew from our boys what the signs were.
That same week, a retreat to Greece fourteen months out, sold out in forty-eight hours. I sat in a hospital and watched God do both at once.
I am not writing this for sympathy.
I am writing it for the woman still in postpartum who has not come up for air. I see you. I feel you.
You are more than the story you are in right now. Nobody gets to tear you down. Let's rebuild you.
