Autumn’s Story

Our story begins in 2018, right as I turned 20 & my partner turned 21 we decided we were ready to be parents. We figured at our ages it must be easy to just “get the hard parts over with early” right? well, that wasn’t the case for us. We struggled to conceive for over 5 years. I went through lots of testing, medication trials, new vitamin regimes, new diets, etc etc. My life was turmoil for those years trying to juggle being a present partner, a good friend/family member, a team playing employee, etc. all while throwing my hormones through the ringer. 

In those years, I learned a lot about myself & the way I wanted to conduct myself as a *future* parent. I spent time in therapy unraveling things I didn’t even know needed unraveling. I found new friends & moved to a much bigger city from my small town. My partner spent this time pulling himself up the ladder at his workplace. He went from entry level position, to being the guy directly underneath the owner. We both spent so much effort & time to create our family together. 

2022 rolls around & we’re over 4 years into TTC with no positive tests yet…until May 14th 2022. We got our very first positive tests! What a shock they came during a time that we had decided to “coast” on our fertility journey & focus on us. We immediately made the necessary OB appointment & just waited. Unfortunately, I suffered from HG during this pregnancy & my original OB office was not willing to give any form of nausea med. I made the move to a new OB office & finally got my nausea under control. 

Within days of getting my nausea under control my new OB wanted to do a dating scan for their own records. During this scan, at 10 weeks 4 days, we found that our baby had passed estimated 3 weeks prior. I was having a missed miscarriage. My body didn’t recognize that our baby was no longer alive, my body was continuing on as normal. I was at heavy risk for sepsis infection, so we scheduled a D&C procedure. 

After 4+ years of TTC our first baby was just, gone, like the snap of a finger it all happened so fast. I took the next many months to just cope & deal with our loss. My partner dealt in his own ways, which included leaning heavily into his workload as a distraction. Raw emotions are so difficult for the human brain most times. 

2023 we spent looking more into our infertility issues at their core. My partner got some testing done. I had a laparoscopy to see if I had endometriosis, they found a lot of it & burned off what they could to give my uterus a fresh start. I was officially cleared for pregnancy! My partners testing did not come back in our favor, it would cost us tens of thousands of dollars to *potentially* solve his infertility & give us a biological child. That just was not feasible for our family, a middle class working family. We ultimately decided to go with donated sperm for this year worth of cycles & we’d go from there if it still didn’t give our family a start. We also invested in the Inito fertility monitor during this time!

Only 3 cycles later, we got pregnant with our rainbow baby! We were so scared this entire pregnancy of anything & everything going wrong, but thankfully our pregnancy was smooth sailing. We had our son early December 2024, it was the most magical Christmas I could’ve ever wished for. 

Fast forward to today, March 2nd 2026 we found out we were pregnant by surprise! This wasn’t supposed to be possible for us, we have been over the moon about it! We’ve gotten lucky & so far our pregnancy with our daughter has been smooth sailing. I’m currently 24 weeks as I type this email, we’ve reached viability week! After nearly 8 years since our very first cycle TTC, we’re about to have our second rainbow child. What a crazy rollercoaster ride the last 8 years have been for us & our little family! 

Photos taken by Quinn & Co Photography.

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