The picture looks perfect, but the beauty is in what you can’t see: hearts that kept breaking open for love, and the courage to keep walking until the rainbow finally showed up. In their photos, you see six smiling kids and one tiny girl wrapped in the arms of five adoring brothers. You don’t see the long, jagged road that led there, hope, loss, fear, and the stubborn decision to try again. Thirteen years ago, she met a tall, kind guy at work and fell fast. Life rushed forward, engagement, a move, a dog, then a baby, before they felt “ready.” They learned parenting in real time, diapers to dawn, and soon welcomed another son.
A move brought a new pregnancy and then a first shattering loss, bleeding, an ER visit, and a goodbye she hadn’t prepared for. She grieved, got pregnant again, and two more boys arrived. Four sons, laughter everywhere, and, after two of those births, a fog of postpartum anxiety and depression that swallowed holidays and made joy feel far away. She told herself she couldn’t do it again.
Life had other plans. Pregnant once more, she saw a perfect name stitched on a blanket, Henry, and went alone to the 20-week check because they’d done this so many times. The room went quiet. The Doppler picked up only her own heart. The ultrasound showed a still baby who looked exactly like a dream. She called her husband with the words no parent is ready to say and delivered their son the next day. She left the hospital without him, weak from transfusions, body and heart both emptied. A year later, another positive test. Theodore Henry grew up under the shadow of their loss, and every appointment felt like walking a tightrope. She learned to breathe through the fear. He arrived safely, a bright boy with his brother’s name on his middle line.
By then, she’d made peace with being a “boy mom.” Wanting a daughter didn’t mean she loved her sons less; she’d once pictured pigtails among the baseball caps. And still, pregnancy meant risk, during and after. Then came another son and another goodbye at 11 weeks. She swore it was a sign to close the door for good. But early in 2021, a ninth pregnancy appeared. Her progesterone dipped; the fear flared; she kept going anyway. At eleven weeks, her phone lit up late at night: test results ready.
She couldn’t wait until morning. Pink confetti, a banner burst across the screen, “It’s a girl.” She woke her husband; he fell back asleep; she called her mom and cried. Joy mingled with dread. She was 35, on daily progesterone, and all too aware that early news can be followed by sudden silence. She held tight to faith and routine, counting kicks and calendar squares.
Months later, their daughter, Lucy Lou Jeanne, arrived, tucked into a chorus of brothers who think she hung the moon. A month before Lucy’s birth, her own mother died without warning, the same mom who had wept over that late-night pink banner. Holding her daughter now feels like standing in two worlds, sweetness and ache. She talks to Lucy as if they’re both listening for Grandma’s reply, sure the woman she loved is cradling the babies they lost and cheering them on.
Looking back, the path is messy and full: six living children, three babies in heaven, a marriage stretched and stitched by grief, postpartum storms weathered, appointments survived, and faith held with white knuckles. She knows a photo can’t show any of that. It won’t show the at-home Doppler that picked up the wrong heartbeat, the dark ultrasound room, the hospital bracelets, the half-packed diaper bag that went back on a shelf. It won’t show the quiet courage of getting pregnant after loss, of asking for help, of naming a child you won’t get to raise.
She tells her story because someone standing in a pharmacy aisle, holding a test and a thousand “what ifs,” needs to hear it. Because a mom scrolling past smiling families should know many of those smiles sit on top of scar tissue. Because wanting a child you don’t have doesn’t cancel gratitude for the ones you do. She prays for the women in the middle of the storm, the partners standing helpless beside them, and the kids who grow up knowing love can make room for joy and sorrow at the same table. There’s a baby girl in a sea of brothers and an empty space with a name. Both are part of their family, both matter. And when Lucy giggles, everyone swears they can hear their grandmother’s laugh in the echo.
