Our journey to having children has been an unexpected struggle. We began trying to conceive in March 2023. After 6 months, we successfully got pregnant and were over the moon! I took a test in the middle of the work day and was beside myself when it showed up positive. I spent the rest of the day pacing, tracking Nathan's location and waiting for him to come home. I had the test laying on the kitchen table and my heart was racing as he walked in and saw the "YES" on that little pink test. Nathan literally jumped for joy and all we could do was say "I can't believe it! Oh my gosh, I can't believe this is real." We told our families soon after and in the weeks to follow, we took so much joy from telling all of our close friends.

Everything in the pregnancy was going perfectly. We heard the heartbeat, got the genetic testing done, and found out the gender - finding out we were having a little girl was a dream come true. We'd both wanted a girl so badly (Nathan is obsessed with those little baby bows) but didn't think we'd get so lucky. We made it past the first trimester, then 16 weeks, then 18 weeks. We even had our 20 week anatomy scan scheduled. All was going according to plan until one night in December. We were wrapping Christmas presents when I felt a big gush of fluid. We weren't sure what it was, but knew it wasn’t good so we drove to the hospital. We tried staying calm but were unprepared to hear the news from the doctor - our daughter's heartbeat was fading and my body was going into labor much too early for her to survive. My doctors suspected the cause to be incompetent cervix and we agreed that in my next pregnancy, I would get a cervical cerclage.

Less than 3 months later, I got pregnant again with another little girl and we were cautiously optimistic that this pregnancy would be successful. I got my cervical cerclage at 13 weeks pregnant and after that, we felt the weight of stress begin to lift off our shoulders. However, on a random day in July at 21 weeks pregnant, I stood up from the couch and felt my water break again. I was rushed to the hospital where we found our baby girl was still alive, but over the next few days, my body went into labor and again, I had to deliver her stillborn.

Sadly, the idea of getting pregnant again sounds terrifying. We would gladly endure all of the physical and mental stress of pregnancy 100 times over, but Nathan and I cannot bear to hold another stillborn baby in our arms.

How we plan to move forward…

We have no intention of giving up on having children. We’ve both felt an innate desire to build a family and we fell in love with each other by imagining one another as a parent. We, along with our doctors, believe that surrogacy is the best way forward to create a family. For those of you who have no clue how surrogacy works (just like we didn’t have any clue 3 months ago), here’s how it works -

Step 1 - Make embryos with a fertility clinic

Step 2 - Sign a contract with a surrogacy agency and get on their waitlist to match with a surrogate.

Step 3 - Match with a surrogate and sign the legal contracts

Step 4 - Transfer the embryo into the surrogate

Step 5 - Come home with a baby 9 months later!

This process is long and expensive but it's the one path forward that gives us hope for our future family.

We've been asked by many friends and family if we plan to start a Go Fund Me to help fund this journey. You all have surrounded us with so much love and support, so we don’t expect any more generosity. With that being said, if donating to us has been on your heart, we are open to private donations of any amount.

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