The morning after giving birth to our daughter, Sophie, a nurse delivered a large arrangement of white funeral flowers tied with a black ribbon.<\/p>\n
The unsigned card read: \u201cSome arrivals should have remained goodbyes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hidden in the ribbon was a silver baby-carriage charm engraved with the date my husband Leon had ended his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Sheila, nine years earlier.<\/p>\n
Then Sheila called.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou finally got everything that belonged to me,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
Over the following weeks, the harassment escalated. She obtained Sophie\u2019s hospital photograph, hand-delivered old pictures to our house, watched the nursery through the window, and sent messages proving she knew our every move.<\/p>\n
We eventually discovered Sheila had spent seven years using a fake Facebook account to befriend Leon\u2019s aunt. Through her posts, Sheila learned about our wedding, home, pregnancy, hospital room, and Sophie\u2019s upcoming church ceremony.<\/p>\n
Police used the ceremony as a trap.<\/p>\n
Sheila arrived carrying a baby gift and claimed Sophie should have been hers. Detectives arrested her before she could approach us.<\/p>\n
Inside her car, police found maps, photographs, family schedules, baby gifts labeled \u201cFor My Daughter,\u201d and a scrapbook where my face had been replaced with hers.<\/p>\n
Sheila was convicted of stalking, harassment, and trespassing.<\/p>\n
Months later, I destroyed the funeral card.<\/p>\n
Our daughter\u2019s story would not begin with Sheila\u2019s obsession\u2014but with the family that fought to protect her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The morning after giving birth to our daughter, Sophie, a nurse delivered a large arrangement of white funeral flowers tied with a black ribbon. The unsigned card read: \u201cSome arrivals should have remained goodbyes.\u201d Hidden in the ribbon was a silver baby-carriage charm engraved with the date my husband Leon had ended his relationship with …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8648,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8646\/revisions\/8648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}