Sandy Jorgenson

When I check on our daughter before heading to bed myself, I have to do a quick scan around her full-size bed just to locate her. She is almost never remotely close to where she started out. But she is almost always upside down, head jammed up against the wall or her footboard, stuffed animals scattered like confetti all around her.

I know motherhood is hard. Especially new motherhood — those early days are a fog of tears, confusion, and helplessness. But I also know that yearning for something you can’t have, particularly with regard to children, is a feeling far worse. I’ve lived through the pain of childbirth, of a 3rd-degree tear, two related surgeries and a year of recovery, of postpartum depression, of miscarriage and of infertility and my god; I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant a chance to… Well, to do it all over again.

The night I discovered that tumor on her back was essentially just like any other.

My daughter was just reaching her first birthday before the dense fog of postpartum depression started to lift off of me. I didn’t realize it right away, though – and I certainly hadn’t even realized I was suffering from PPD at all.

Everybody who’s a parent can attest to the fact that the lives they once knew are far behind them.

*/

Griping about adulting is a fun thing that we like to do, I know.

Anybody who has lived through those early days of parenthood (and let’s be totally forthright, here… those seasoned parents, too) knows e

When a bereaved mother is left alone, how deep into the recesses of her mind does she wander? Does she surface for air? Does she want to come out at all?

Whoever is responsible for coining the term “terrible twos” and leaving the entirety of the threes out of the equation is sitting at the very top of my sh*t list. Because a little warning would’ve been nice.