The Long Journey
Our journey started two years into marriage, when we finally became pregnant after trying consistently for eight months. We, as most couples, were so excited to finally be pregnant and establish our family. While I was with my family in Montana, (and even wearing a shirt that read “Pregnancy is totally in style”) I began to have intense pains and I ended up miscarrying. I will never forget the moment that I asked my mom to call my husband and tell him that I would be returning home, no longer pregnant.
We were devastated. We had been told that miscarriages were pretty common, especially with first pregnancies, but we had been trying for so long and suddenly it was all taken away. It sucked. But, we picked our heads up and kept moving forward.
After one and a half years of trying again, we finally received our one and only miracle baby, Mae. We are so fortunate to have her and cherish her every single day. We love her with every emotion we have. Receiving her was one of the greatest blessings in our lives and we’re indebted to our Heavenly Father for her. Once she turned one, we headed back to our fertility doctor to start the process again, knowing it might be a long journey, with our history. After a few months we got pregnant but then quickly miscarried again. This was only the beginning of what would end up being 5 total miscarriages. What followed, on our journey, was endless amounts of injections, drugs, bloodwork, surgery, chemo, IUI, IVF, and finally, some test results that would shed some light. We ended up getting pregnant all on our own, when we decided to stop trying.
When we found out it was a boy, I literally crumbled to the floor and bawled, knowing that I would finally get to hold my little baby boy one day.
It was such a long, expensive, heart-wrenching and emotional journey. But I also wouldn’t trade it for anything – it changed who we were as individuals, parents, husband/wife, and friends. I am a better mother because of it, and my husband and I have had to cling to each other and learn to be happy with where we are in life even when it got hard. It gave us an immense dream and vision for starting a non-profit one day-something we have written on our fridge and we often talk about. One day, we hope to be able to help couples so that they can grow their families without the immense financial burden to bear. We were blessed by some generous donations and each penny helped take a weight off our hearts. We cannot wait to do this for others! When roughly adding our costs up, we estimated it to be around $50,000 without the cost of actually delivering the baby, which will add another $6,000.
Leo was born in December of 2017, the best Christmas present I could have possibly asked for. Even though it’s been over one year of having this perfect little soul in our home, I still feel the need to pinch myself. I always want more time, more cuddles, and more connecting with him. And our journey is not ending here! We are already hoping that our other little frozen girl embryo can join our family in the years to come, and we are starting to plan for that now. After that, we will still have hundreds of couples to help. This will be a lifelong journey and a calling for our family. We believe adversity and loss has pushed us towards a life-changing journey that we wouldn’t have discovered without the five babies we lost.
After fighting so hard for our two miracle babies, as you can imagine they mean so much to me. Jewelry has always been a way for me to keep things close to my heart and having my kids names and birthdates on my Tiny Tags necklace means the world to me.
