When I found out I was pregnant a 4th time (3 losses in row) I heard so many from strangers mine isn’t necessarily advice but more open mouth insert foot “Are you SURE this one is going to work?” I was also told if I was on my cell phone or around my modem/router it would cause brain damage to my unborn child. She’s 4, perfectly healthy, no brain damage and let’s just say it took a lot of medical attention to get her to full term. What caused my miscarriages they said my hormones couldn’t sustain a pregnancy and after the 3rd I was told that with my hormone levels getting pregnant again wouldn’t happen. She was a surprise and the best one ever. It took an educated doctor that wanted the best outcome. Previous doctors just looked at my history and was like sorry for your loss maybe next time will go better.. The best day of my husband and mines life was finding out that she was alive, thriving and having an amazing doctor who moved heaven and earth to make sure she’d make it. He was at work when I found out he actually yelled and his entire office heard him he almost ran around the office he was more excited than me!

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I’ve had many students that are still taking a large place in my heart. Some are sad, like the girl whose mother started beating her during a parent conference. I started crying and begged the mother to stop. The student who had no water or electricity at home but we allowed him to shower at school and we washed his clothes. The student who watched his grandparents get murdered by his mother and wrote about it in an essay for my class. The student who had never been in a lake that we took camping. He was so excited but didn’t know how to swim. So he just stood in the water up to his neck and grinned. Lovely. The girl with terrible anxiety that I sat with for hours after school to work on school work, not because she wasn’t smart, but because she was so anxious about not being perfect. The girl who was mauled by a dog, which messed up her face, but she always smiled. The girl whose father brought her to school every day late who finally broke down and told me her father was raping her every day when the mother left to go to work. The Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees who flooded my school after the war. One wrote an essay about running towards a boat and seeing his grandfather get shot but he had to keep running. The Brazilian boy who got up in class and got me to start dancing with him while we all laughed joyfully. The group of students I took outside during their first snowstorm. The wonder on their faces was priceless. The student who found me on Facebook after 20 years to tell me I made a difference in her life. She came to my state and took me to dinner and told me I was there for her when her home life was terrible. I had no idea. I’m just kind to everyone. I have a million more stories. I have loved every student and being able to teach has been an honor.

Melanie Hernandez • is following a person