Emily

Playing house, dolls and dress up was where my dream began, almost like it was known from the beginning that I’d live to become a mother. I’d spend my life battling a silent battle with my body to become a mom. Early on I knew my dream to become a mother would be a fight. I was diagnosed with a rare form of a bowel disease; that if not taken care at an early age would go cancerous. I was 12 years old when my life changed and I had a couple of surgeries to (hopefully) help my disease from progressing. I consider myself to be very lucky, that my disease has not progressed to a cancerous stage, but I still have to have check ups ever 6-12 months. The surgeries saved my life, but left me with 100% blocked tubes.

When I met my husband for the first time, we hated each other. He was the jokester and class clown in high school and I was the shy quiet girl. We didn’t get along and I cringed at every encounter I had with him during those 3 years of high school. I moved away after graduating and life went on. 5 years later, I came home to stand in my little sisters wedding. He was the best man. The day we stood in that wedding was the day I knew I finally found my one, as if everything I knew about him before that moment had disappeared. He has been my backbone every since that day.

We started talking about children early on (more me then him). I bugged him from day one that I was ready to start a family. We started our journey to parenthood in 2009. It wasn’t until 2011 when we finally decided we needed to seek help. We started our testing in 2011 and early in 2012 we did our first IVF fresh cycle. We were both so hopeful for that cycle. It was as if we didn’t prepare ourselves for a let down, for the “what if’s”. It’s completely true. I never thought for a moment it wouldn’t work, in my head it was blocked tubes and everything else was fine. They give you percentages; numbers and I don’t think you completely run the figures until you are on the other side looking back. We were given the news that we were finally pregnant and we celebrated. We have been very open about our struggles; I had no shame in having my voice heard. Our first cycle we told everyone what was going on and we did daily updates. At the almost 6 week mark we were getting pretty excited for what the future held for us, and we went on with our normal everyday lives. I was helping David out at work one afternoon when I started feeling really sick and began to feel sharp pains. I figured they were just “pregnancy” related and thought nothing of it until that evening when the pains began to get much worse. I couldn’t move and I began bleeding. It was a long weekend of hospital jumping and being in the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. Things turned out to be pretty bad and it was determined we lost the baby after an ectopic pregnancy. We felt defeated and heartbroken; we weren’t prepared for a loss.

It took months for us to come to terms with what had really happened, but we were finally ready to try again in June. We started our next steps in July and had everything ready for a frozen transfer of our 2 embryos. The date picked for transfer, July 20th at 11am, was going to be the day that changed our lives for the better. Weeks of nasal spray and pills, July 20 came and we were getting ready to head to the clinic for a transfer when my phone rang; it was the clinic calling to tell us our eggs didn’t make the thaw. I broke down and cried for hours, felt like we were hitting bottom and honestly didn’t know how we were going to make it. We took a break from “baby making.” We just couldn’t bare the thought of any more losses and bad news. Even though we were on break from it all, I couldn’t get “baby” off my mind and I knew that we’d have to give it one more try before we truly said no more. 2013 came pretty fast and we decided that we needed to try again, we started our fresh cycle in January and by the end of March we had 26 eggs retrieved and at day 5 we had 3 still surviving. We put back 2 embryos and froze 1. I was very negative in this cycle, I wanted nothing to do with hope, and I felt beyond defeated, but I also knew it was the only way I’d ever have a chance of my dreams coming true. We had complications starting from the beginning of this pregnancy and there were a few times when we were sure it was ending with tears. However, on May 4th, when we thought we were losing our baby, an ultrasound showed one little flickering heart, that day still marks one of the best days of our lives. July 20th came and we found out we were having a little boy. One year ago, I lost all hope from our frozen cycle. What a difference a year can make.

We were blessed with meeting our amazing little miracle Braxton in December 2013 and life since him has been eye opening. I knew I’d love my baby but I didn’t realize how strong that love would become.

We are 1 in 6 and we want to start a conversation.