Love, Loss, Faith and now Hope

Teonne Rose Ogden is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Tracey Schlosser.

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Justin and I began officially "dating" the last day of my junior year of high school. He proposed in Disneyland 2011, and we were married by our grandmother in May 2012. We've been together blissfully for over 10 years. In December 2012 we were ready to take the leap to begin "trying" for a family. We'd always wanted children, but wanted to wait until we were married and had a home. As many already know, this is when our journey took a very unexpected turn. Our first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage after 8 weeks. We were shocked but stayed optimistic. As soon as we were able, we tried again. I became pregnant again in July 2013. Everything was perfection. My symptoms were minimal, he was active, we took belly photos, decorated a superhero nursery for our expected baby boy. Liam James was born on March 25th 2014. He too was perfection. Everything we anticipated for years was finally true. However, after a very long month in the NICU, and a very short month at home, Liam passed away after 65 days with us. His story, and his life has changed and united so many. His memory lives on through so many people, photos, and keepsakes. He was and forever will be our first born, or beloved little superman. We will always be so proud and thankful for the time we did get to spend with him. His passing was very very unexpected. It was a long road, but it was determined after an autopsy that Liam had what’s called IIAC (Idiopathic Infantile Arterial Calcification) also known as GACI (Generalized Infantile Arterial Calcification). We learned IIAC is an extremely rare (less than 200 cases ever reported in history), usually fatal genetic disorder. The condition affects infants during the first 6 months of life. IIAC causes calcification in your arteries. Calcification slowly grows and hardens the affected organs. This causes your heart and other organs to eventually overwork themselves to compensate for the calcification until cardiac failure. This is exactly what happened to Liam. Justin and I worked long and hard to survive this and it’s a daily struggle. We both underwent extensive genetic testing to find where this mutation happened and how to move forward with possible future pregnancies. The odds of both people in a couple are actually carriers for the same recessive disease gene is under 1%. Well. Justin and I are that unlucky 1%. IIAC is passed on through an autosomal recessive pattern. Since we are both carriers, we have a 25% chance of passing on the bad gene from each of us to a pregnancy. There have been worse odds. After much, much discussion and decision making, we decided to try again. In January 2015, we found we were finally pregnant again. We cautiously moved forward, however this pregnancy too ended by miscarriage just before 6 weeks. We tried yet again and had another positive test in April. We knew that we would do genetic testing for IIAC as soon as we could. Especially since knowing there is no cure and the disorder is simply not compatible with life. Through this testing we discovered we were to have another baby boy. Shortly after embracing this we discovered unfortunately he too had the same exact genetic mutation as his brother along with the disorder. Tragedy and disbelief struck again. After very thoroughly considering ever bit of every scenario, outcome, and fact, we decided, together, we were unable to move forward with the pregnancy any longer. We had to go through with one of the hardest decisions I believe we have ever been faced with. I can’t explain what this felt like or how hard it was. There's no way to express it. After this, I decided I could not try naturally again and ever face this reality and outcome. Now, it’s the end of September 2015. We are no closer to a family than we were December 2012. It’s been such a long, emotional and devastating few years. I’m more thankful than ever for my husband, but still completely yearn to have a family. We want children here on earth as we have in heaven. We are choosing to through IVF using PDG in hopes to continue our efforts for a family. IVF ( In vitro fertilization) is a process by which an egg is fertilized by sperm outside the body. The process involves monitoring and stimulating a woman's ovulatory process, removing eggs from the woman's ovaries and letting sperm fertilize them in a liquid in a laboratory. The fertilized egg is cultured then implanted in the same woman's uterus, with the intention of establishing a successful pregnancy. We will also be using PGD (preimplantation genetic diagnosis). This refers to genetic profiling of embryos prior to implantation and sometimes even of oocytes prior to fertilization to rule out presence of genetic disorders. Basically, they will only implant normal non affected embryos to ensure the pregnancy will not result in our genetic disorder. Unfortunately, the process is very costly. I’ve went to great lengths, referrals, and recommendations from medical professionals to have costs covered by our insurance. However, after the most recent appeal, they have denied our request. Our very supportive family and friends are helping us raise funds to help cover costs in hopes that the IVF w/PGD is not only successful, but that we could finally take home a child that is disorder free and healthy. We couldn’t be more thankful for everyone that has already helped us get this far.

Our full journey is documented here in more detail - (http://justanotherviewonlifeloveandbeauty.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-story-of-liam-james.html)

We love you all. Thank you very much for helping us with this dream.