Right before my husband and I got married we decided to get off birth control so that we could have a baby right away. He has two children from his previous marriage and they were still young and we wanted to add to our family sooner rather than later. I had had a previous miscarriage and as painful as that was I knew the statistics and knew it was pretty common so when we got pregnant right away I was immediately convinced that we had our miracle baby and all the things in life that I wanted were happening exactly as they should.
Until we went for that first ultrasound on August 8th of 2023 and there was no heartbeat. I remember being stunned. How could God let this happen to me. Again? What did I do in this life that I deserved so much pain? Hadn’t I been through enough? When would I get my happy ending? This was a blow I didn’t think I could come back from. I didn’t say much until we got home and my husband made us lunch and in the middle I just started to sob uncontrollably. I don’t know when that stopped, the next couple of weeks were a blur. The physical part, the pain, it lasts for days… I begged the doctor for a D&C and they made me wait to “make sure”.
The thing is, a woman’s body is sure, it knows when your child is no longer alive inside of you. I couldn’t do the waiting again, it was tearing me apart physically and emotionally. They finally scheduled a D&C for that Friday, My birthday was on Wednesday and on Thursday the physical relief came. That Sunday was my bridal shower where I showed up with a smile and a pretty dress and tried to push through. I only told a handful of people because having to untell is a painful process in itself and I couldn’t handle the looks of sadness and the emotions I took on for others while they watched me grieve. So I grieved mostly alone, if at all. Two weeks later my husband and I got married as planned and life went on. Or so I thought.
Four months after that, my husband went in for some medical issues and was diagnosed with stage three cancer at the age of 38 years old. Devastation was hitting our family relentlessly. As those first few days passed and we talked about next steps and treatment it became abundantly clear that chemo and radiation were our best options before surgically removing the tumor, but it would also wreck his system and likely cause infertility. We had three days before treatment started to bank sperm that we didn’t even know if we would be able to use. I was emotionally spent.
Before I met my husband I was on a path to becoming a mom on my own by Sperm donation or adoption. This was the one thing I had wanted in this life. Marriage wasn’t that big of a deal at the time but I knew I wanted a child. And then I met the love of my ilfe, who was now fighting for his. How do I tell him that the two children he brought into our marriage, whom I truly love as my own, are not enough? How do I tell him it isn’t the same? How do I explain the agony that I am going through? He is literally fighting for his life and all I can think about is that I will never get to have a baby. I felt so broken and lost and utterly alone. But I did what I had to. I took on the role of primary parent to our littles who at the time were 5 and 8, I took care of my husband who was going through this excruciating treatment that was tearing at his will to live. And I was stuffing all of my desires and needs so that I could be the best wife and mom I could, for them.
A few months later we found out that my husband’s job offers one free round of IVF through a special package from our insurance company. My husband expressed his hesitancy to even tell me because he knew that I would want to take advantage as soon as humanly possible. He was not wrong about that. I was also getting older and considering I had two miscarriages already, I didn’t have high hopes the longer we waited. So I started on an IVF journey with a company called Kindbody that I will forever hold dear to my heart. Most of the costs were covered but there was a significant amount paid out of pocket for medications that would increase my chances but were not paid for by the insurance company. I also didn’t care. I was on a mission to make this happen and was willing to do whatever it took.
In June of 2024 I went in to have eggs extracted. They were able to get 14 eggs, which for a woman over the age of 40, is significant! So we were very hopeful. We had 8 that fertilized and 5 that made it to day 6 of the watch period and were frozen to undergo PGT testing. Of those 5 fertilized embryos, every single one was aneuploid. None of them were viable for implantation and with that news went all of my hope, all of my resolve and I slipped into anger and depression, I emotionally withdrew from those around me causing a feeling of neglect for everyone around me to the point that our 5 year old started acting out at home and at school. She was throwing fits and refused to go to school. She would throw things, hit people, run away, climb fences to try to escape. She became demanding and mean and the tantrums went on for weeks until I was both physically and mentally exhausted.
I was also struggling with my own heartbreak and trying to come to a place of acceptance that I would never have the child that I so badly wanted with all of my heart and soul and these two innocent children that are sitting in front of me would have to be enough. I needed to find acceptance of the situation and I was having a very difficult time doing that. Tending to my own emotional needs and withdrawal and trying to manage a child’s needs that I couldn’t seem to care about, couldn’t co-exist. So I surrendered. Sadness took over but at least I had come back to the present so I could be the mom they needed.
My husband’s treatments ended on August 8th of 2024, coincidentally enough, 1 year to the day we got the bad news about our baby. He was starting to come out of his chemo fog and he was feeling a little better. The kids went back to school and our 5 year old daughter who was now 6 was doing much better, no more tantrums. There was still a sadness in me and I think I finally started to grieve all that I had lost or was afraid of losing. The previous pregnancy, the 5 little miracles of hope that never came to fruition and my husband so precariously perched on the edge of leaving us all behind. I still wonder how I got through every day.
My birthday came again and I celebrated with people I loved and who supported me and my family through this all. Two days later I woke up with pregnancy symptoms and took a test that came out positive and as I sat there holding that stick I said out loud “HOW??” I mean, physically I understand how it happened obviously but what I couldn’t understand was how it was possible! My husband has been going through chemotherapy the entire year which usually ends up that he sleeps 4-5 days out of the week because he is literally being poisoned. To top it off, he just underwent 5 weeks of intense radiation blasted right at his baby maker! To add to that, I have already had 2 miscarriages and 5 nonviable embryos. That’s 7 babies that didn’t make it… and when I immediately told my husband, his response was also, “HOW?” I responded, “That’s what I said!?”
But I couldn’t get my hopes up either. I hadn’t had a period since June, I had been bleeding off and on, every week or two just for a day or so since June so obviously this was a mistake or it was dead or dying anyway. And so we waited. Just a week before this news I had decided to make a GoFundMe to try to do another round of IVF but when I found out that we were pregnant, but I was bleeding randomly, the fear that came and took root in my mind and heart, was enough to make me rethink things. So I took it down and returned all the money and I told my husband that no matter what the outcome was, I couldn’t do this again. Whether it’s trying for a baby on our own or another round of IVF, it took this, right now, for me to realize that I was at my breaking point. That I could not endure another loss. I had been obsessively trying to get what I wanted and dragging everyone down this path with me. I never even stopped to grieve and now I was terrified of adding more grief on top of it.
On September 10th we went to the doctor with no idea how far along I was but with absolutely no hope that it would survive and to our surprise and elation, there was a heartbeat. It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard. But the clouds didn’t part then… I bled again and ended up in the ER and at some point we realized that even if there was a heartbeat, he had been undergoing treatments for most of the year and it was very likely that there would be something terribly wrong with the baby and it wouldn’t survive. So we held our breath at every appointment, at every scan, at all the milestones like the end of the first trimester, the 18 week scan to check its genetic makeup and viability, and so on.
Little by little I started to hope. It took me months to entertain the thought of naming him, buying him clothes, letting someone throw me a baby shower. It has been the most terrifying and wonderful experience at the same time. I wake in the middle of the night in a panic some nights because I think he has died, I have nightmares, I think about my sister a lot who lost her little boy at 38 weeks and I have to talk myself down more than I expected at this point. I also revel in the small moments and I talk to him when we are alone, I sing to him and I tell him every day how much I love him and I beg him to just hold on for momma a little longer because we only have so many weeks left. I never expected to love someone so much that I haven’t even met yet. Yesterday we celebrated him at his baby shower and in April we will get to meet him.
His name is Hunter Scott and I will celebrate him every single day and make sure he knows what we, as women, go through so that he can be the kind of loving and supportive father that his daddy has been for me. For all the women who have experienced loss, I see you and I feel you and you are not alone.
Photos taken by Jane Robles.
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