If you struggled with a difficult pregnancy
If you are a single mum doing your best to make ends meet
If you are a mum raising a child with special needs
On this Mother’s Day, we celebrate and honour you.

Thank you for giving so much even when you had so little
Thank you for appearing strong even when you were weak
Thank you for choosing us even when we didn’t choose you.

Ma, Mum, Mama, Mummy
You are beautiful both inside and out
You are so much more than you give yourself credit for.

We hope you know that you are seen
We hope you know that you are loved
You are the Mum we want to be some day.

Happy Mothers Day ❤࿠f;

Life came to an immediate standstill as Herng Wei and Gaius struggled to make one of the hardest decisions of their life. Watch what happened next.

As a Christian, she said “I’m sorry God, but I have no choice.”
She booked an abortion appointment, determined to delete this chapter from her story.

What happened next? Watch to find out.

To anyone in a similar situation: do not be afraid to ask for help. You might be surprised at how much your community would be willing to invest to help you succeed in this journey!

Watch how their community impacted their journey as young parents!

You’ve watched Mark & Sarah’s story. Now listen to their daughter, Ines, as she shares her take, her dreams and what it’s like growing up with young parents!

They were youth leaders in church and leading a double life. No one knew about their relationship. How would their friends and family react to their teenage pregnancy?

Catch their responses in our new series “Dear Adults” as the kids give their take on one of society’s most sensitive subjects.

By Adeline Koh

When my daughter Ellyssa was born, the nurses were holding on to her and telling my husband and I that they needed to do further checks. We were puzzled. For our first two children, the nurses would almost immediately hand them over to us, and allow me to start breastfeeding them.

During the pregnancy, we had decided not to do prenatal testing, as was the case with our first two children, and abortion was not an option for us. The routine detailed scan at five months of pregnancy did not detect any issue with our baby girl. Was there now something wrong with our child?

Our usual paediatrician was on holiday, and another paediatrician was in charge. He came in with a solemn look on his face and asked the question that would change my life, “Do you know what Mongolism is?” I did not immediately connect that archaic term with what we commonly know as “Down Syndrome”, but my husband did. As the paediatrician explained about the condition, tears rolled down my cheeks.

Within the first year of her birth, I was crying every day. I felt a lot of guilt and condemnation, wondering if I was the one who had caused it to happen, or if I did something wrong when I was carrying Ellyssa in my womb. It was also the first time I saw my husband cry. We were worried. Who was going to take care of her when we are no longer around? How were we going to afford the many hospital visits and therapies?

My older children—who were aged 5 and 3 then—were puzzled when my husband and I told them about their sister. They wondered why we were crying, and simply asked what it was about. In fact, in that year, the ones who hurt me the most were Christians who told me that I “didn’t pray hard enough”, or that I must have “committed a great sin”, which led to my daughter’s condition. However, the verse that kept my sanity in that difficult time was Ephesians 2:10, which says that we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. I recited the verse to Ellyssa every day, even as I was breastfeeding her.

“Blessed Are The Peacemakers”
Thankfully, even though I was deeply hurt by my own Christian community, our parents were very supportive. People whom we could trust, talk to and share our struggles with were sent to us by divine intervention.

I had a mentor who visited me about three times in the three weeks we had to stay in hospital. When Ellyssa had to see a doctor for jaundice, we were blessed to have a doctor who was experienced with Down Syndrome.

When it came to education, we wanted to place Ellyssa in a particular school, but were cautioned that the waiting list for that school would be very long. There were parents who had to wait for a year. But we managed to enrol her in the school within a few months, and she was blessed to have very dedicated teachers.

Community found us, and this little glimmer of hope grew even bigger as God revealed that one purpose of Ellyssa’s life is to be a peacemaker. Ellyssa is friendly and very sensitive to people’s feelings. When was about two years old, she would lay her hands on her older siblings when she noticed they were in a bad mood, say something (which we could not understand), and end off in a clear and loud “Amen!”

When we brought our children on their first mission trip, Ellyssa went around giving hugs to a number of children. On our second mission trip to an orphanage, Ellyssa happily joined the children there and made friends with them.

Because of Ellyssa, my husband and I have done many things outside our comfort zone. She has brought a lot of joy to us through different experiences. Without her, life would not be as exciting as it is. That is truly something which I am grateful for.

By Rachel Tan

Less than two months into the pregnancy with my first child Johanna, I started spotting (bleeding) heavily and the obstetrician-gynaecologist (OB-GYN) that I was seeing at KK Hospital diagnosed it as a threatened miscarriage.

“About 20 per cent of pregnancies end in miscarriages,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes, it’s the body’s way of telling you there’s something wrong with the quality of the embryo. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

My husband and I prayed very hard in our helplessness, bargaining with God to let us keep the baby. The spotting eventually stopped and we started looking forward to building our family, and in the excitement, the incident was relegated to the back of our minds.

In January 2014, I was about 22 weeks along in my pregnancy when I went for a detailed scan.

“There’s something wrong with your baby’s heart,” the words of the doctor were razor sharp and cut deep. My mind went awfully blank. I did not feel any emotion, but some part of my soul must have heard the doctor because I could feel hot tears slipping down my cheeks.

Between sobs I called Ivan from the toilet. When he arrived, we were told that our baby would be born blue, and would require multiple dangerous, expensive heart surgeries and a daily cocktail of medication just to get her to adulthood.

We sought a second opinion that day from another doctor. Using a rudimentary sketch of a heart on a piece of paper, the older doctor explained that our baby had a rare condition called Transposition of the Great Arteries, among other complications. He advised us to consider our options carefully, or that we could also choose to terminate the pregnancy there and then.

Giving New Life
We were just two weeks shy of the legal time limit of 24 weeks for abortion. To keep our options open, the doctors recommended that Ivan and I go for the mandatory pre-abortion counselling.

In that time, Ivan reminded me of how God had answered our prayers to let us keep the baby in our first trimester, and it was then that we knew termination of the pregnancy was not an option. Right now, we had to trust that if our prayers to sustain her life before had been answered, then surely He could do another miracle for Johanna.

I had already begun feeling the butterfly movements of the baby, and I realised that she was a fully formed being and I had no right to choose whether she should live or die. When she was found to be free from chromosomal abnormalities or foetal infections, I realised I would have kept her and loved her even if the results were otherwise.

At 9.34 AM on 22 April 2014, Johanna was born, weighing in at a hefty 3.2kg. Despite all the fears that she would be blue and un-oxygenated once out of my womb, she emerged pink and yelling at the top of her lungs.

Since then, Johanna has gone through two operations to fix her heart, each teaching me to trust God more. Today she is a precocious pre-schooler! Other than a zipper scar on her chest, she is medication-free and no different from her nursery playmates. To be sure, even as she has turned my life upside-down, she put a whole lot of things into perspective. Some may say it is the mother who brings new life into this world, but really, I think she is the one who gave me new life.