“That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one”

“until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one”

“It took me a lifetime to realizethings don't get lost if they don't have value- you don't miss what you don't care about.”

“Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.”

“There are legions of us, I realized. The mothers who have broken babies, and spend the rest of our lives wondering if we should have spared them. And the mothers who have let their broken babies go, who look at our children and see instead the faces of the ones they never met.”

“Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.”

“Sometimes, mothers say and do things that seem like they don't want their kids... but when you look more closely, you realize that they're doing those kids a favor. They're just trying to give them a better life.”