Personal Narrative: Growing Up With A New Baby

I was 33 years old on November 9th, 2000. My family was made of myself, my husband, Doug, my daughter, Haley, and our dog, Josie. Haley was only 2 years and 9 months old at the time of the birth of her new baby brother, but I wasn’t quite sure how she would handle not having all of the attention. I could tell something was off from the moment I woke up that day. To start, Haley wouldn’t stop crying from the moment she woke up. As for me, I was feeling sick, and was having a few contractions here and there. I was packing my things for the hospital because I was scheduled to have a C-section November 10th. Afternoon came and my condition was getting worse and worse, things got so bad that Doug and I decided we should go to the hospital. I was mortified because I just needed the baby to wait a couple more hours. I could not have this baby come out of the birth canal, my

I remember the day like it was yesterday. I just had got off the bus and I looked at my phone I saw I had 20 text and 8 missed call. I was wondering why I had so many text and calls before I could even look at them.

They wouldn’t tell me, but I think he was dead when the medics got to my house. After that its a blur, no one would tell me anything, they made me sit on the front porch while they took pictures of the house. Then the questioning began, I had to talk to a detective because who knows, the 15 year old might have purposely let her 1 year old brother choke to-death. Was I sure it was the whole egg yoke? yes it was, did I drop him? no I didn’t, what time exactly did it all begin? questions like this over and over again. I don’t blame them for doing their job I just wish I could have been left alone. Finally, after what seemed like hours, my mom called, she was hysterical her baby was dead and I couldn’t help her, I was so helpless and empty, he was my baby too. My mom was so sick when she had him that I got up with him several times every night; I changed his diapers, fed him, dressed him, held him when he cried. He was more my baby, than he was a sibling. I sometimes wonder if I had done this, that, or the other differently, if he would have survived, or maybe it wouldn’t have happened at

During my two pregnancies, BabyCenter L.L.C. has been a frequently surfed guide for my children's developmental milestones. Referring to the site and zealously studying the information served as a litmus test for personal successes of parenting, in addition to my index of "expertise" for engaging in educating conversations with my pediatrician. Currently, my younger son is six-years-old. As a first grader, his teacher requires him to know his age and birth date. However, a favorable assessment considers more than the month and day; he must have knowledge of his birth year also. Therefore, my son's inability to communicate those details would alarm his teacher that he has not reached a crucial milestone in his development. Correspondingly, I

What had started out as one of the most normal days, changed and shaped the rest of my life. It was on March 14th, 2012, or “Pi Day,” that this event happened. My brother and I had just gotten off the bus and walked home. When we got home, we did what we usually did and went to our own rooms; he got on his xbox and I was on my phone. The blinds that covered my window were up and my window was open, it was a nice day out. Around 3:30ish, I see two sheriff's cars pull up in front of my house. When they get to the door, they ask to speak to my mom. After about five minutes, my mom tells us to go down to our neighbor’s house, and she was in tears. She wouldn’t tell us why, but we just listened to her. So we went down there, and we ended up leaving with him and his family for his soccer practice. I had no idea what was going on, and I didn’t know what to think. After being at his practice for a good 20/30 min, I get a text message from my sister saying, “ Matt and I are on our way to pick you and your brother up.” When she gets here, nothing is said on the way home; a whole fifteen minutes of complete silence. There are at least 10 cars parked all around my house and up and down my street. My

I gave birth to twin daughters. They were extremely premature (born at 6 months gestation), weighing around 2 pounds each. Given that I was already dilated and in labor by the time I reached the hospital, they decided to have the babies naturally. Despite having contractions for more than 30 hours, I recovered quickly after the births and was discharged the next day.

Two years have passed since I saw that note on his pillow. Two years of misery, two years of non-stop searching, two years of unanswered questions. Sometimes I think I see him; Sitting next to an older lady on the subway, Sitting in the corner in the coffee shop, or even leaning on one of the lampposts in 5th street. But it never fails, I move to see if it’s him, hoping it’s my husband.. but it’s not. It never is, no one is in that seat, no one is leaning on the lamppost. My husband is a ghost.

I often hear people complaining about how hard it is to raise one child, consider having to raise twins. I would argue that twins are harder to deal with, especially fraternal twins. Now I would be the first to say that when I found out we were pregnant with twins, I was terribly overwhelmed with different emotions; I was shocked, overjoyed, and distraught at the same time. “You may start asking yourself questions like: How am I going to do this?, Who is going to help me?, How are going to be able to afford this.” (Diaz, 2013) These are all questions I asked myself repeatedly throughout the leading up to the day they were born. We had other questions. The number one question; “How can we possibly care for two babies at the same

This is a story that no one knows a part of my life about. When I was 6 years old I was living on the streets with my brother, Sam, who was 4 at that time in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, near Russia. My parents who were bad people didn’t want to take care of us so they gave us to our grandma to take care of us. But when my grandma died she decided that the best thing to do was to put us on the streets where she knew I would take good care of both Sam and me. Sam and I had to learn how to survive on the streets as orphans for a couple of months. Every night I would always put bread under my pillow. I would share it with Sam when we got hiungry. We were on the streets for a couple of months. One day the Child Protective Service found us on

Parenting has proven to be an everyday struggle. However, in the beginning, it seemed as though it would be effortless. It wasn’t until later that all the challenges of “Parenthood,” occurred.

Midwifery to me is a subject like no other, it's not just an interest, it's a passion and its components are a major part of my life. Since the birth of my 4 beautiful children and then the 12 wonderful nieces and nephews that followed , my knowledge in all things pregnancy, childbirth and babies has grew and grew along with my insatiable thirst to know more. I have been the mother giving birth and the supportive birthing partner on many occasions, the worried new mother and the care giver to relatives in their antenatal and postpartum periods. Along the way I have gained first and second hand experience with conditions as such as preeclampsia, cholestasis, mastitis, antenatal depression, postnatal

I remember the day when the whole community got together to congratulate us on the big news.

Growing up, I heard lots of stories: how I was born as a premature child and the doctors were worried about the rods and cones in my eyes, how my grandmother passed from a surgical mishap, my grandparents’ numerous cataract surgeries, and how I have the same big eyes that my grandmother had. Years later, in sixth grade, I took a forensics course, and I realized that I was really interested in the scientific aspect of the mysteries presented: I was interested in how the surgical mishap of my grandmother occurred, how I have the same eyes as my grandmother, how cataract surgeries work, and why as a premature baby, doctors were worried about my vision. From that year onward, I knew I wanted to pursue science.

On October 24, 2017 my life has changed drastically and I’m still trying to decide how I’m going to cope with the situation. It was a regular night as I was laying in my bed on my phone before I was ready to go to sleep. Suddenly a Snapchat group chat with all of my girlfriends started to blow up and with confusion, I quickly started to look at it. Maria said “Sal just got shot” and my heart jumped out of my chest. I glanced at peoples stories and all I saw was “Stay strong Sal” or “Stay strong my bro Sal”. I ran downstairs with tears rolling down my face while I screamed at my parents to let them know what was going on. Since my dad is a police officer, I told him that he immediately needed to figure out what happened and let me know as soon as he found out. I zoomed back in my bed and looked at my social media for a second time as I began to shake with fear. The tears started to fall down faster and faster as the stories continued, but this time it said “Rip Sal” and I couldn’t believe what I seen. The girls in my group chat said he was rushed to the hospital and that was the same news my parents just gave me. For the last time I went downstairs and they told me he was in bad condition. I didn’t want to hear any bad news so I angrily went in my room. I started to get texts and call from my cousin and sister and I felt overwhelmed and felt like my head was a moving spiral that was consistently going down. There were so many rumors going on I didn’t know what to believe so

Majority of the time I would live with my mother in Chestermere because my dad would be gone for one month then be back for five to seven days. When he would go we wouldn’t skype anymore because of excuses. Eventually this really caused a divide in the family. After my dad doing this for over a year and a half my mom had soon found out during this that my dad was cheating on her. My mom almost every night after school lock herself in her room and completely ignore Simon and I. Simon and I were in charge of making our lunches and also making dinner, practically taking care of ourselves and each other instead of having a parent looking and taking care of us. Soon our family became very anti social towards each other and people around us. Almost every night my mom would be drinking alcohol. One night at two in the morning I heard very loud yelling coming from out in the hall/ my moms room. I automatically had assumed that my dad had came home or my parents were fighting. Eventually I decided that I would go check out what was happening. Almost every light was on in the whole house and about five police officers were in my house. Frantically I had tried to figure out what was happening by myself but a woman police officer had noticed that me and my brother were out of our rooms and quickly came to assist to us. “ Your mom has