“I realized trying to conceal the severity of my symptoms for the sake of ‘keeping my chin up’ was incredibly dangerous. I needed help. My precious baby needed help. My body is forced to keep my baby alive by slowly killing me in the process.”
‘You’re supposed to be glowing, showing off your pregnant belly. Instead, the bones in your chest are popping through as your body wastes away.’ After struggling with IVF, Mom now battles Hyperemesis Gravidarum in surprise pregnancy
‘I sobbed as my husband picked up. He knew immediately it was a ‘no.’ We made plans of all the ways I’d ‘surprise’ him with a pregnancy announcement. This call was NOT part of our plan.’
“’Katie, is now an okay time to talk?’ It was our IVF coordinator. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t have very good news.’ I choked back tears, and thanked her. He had a total of 12 sperm. My husband hugged me and apologized. It was heartbreaking. Our doctor grabbed my hand. I looked at her in disbelief.”
‘Daniel may have trouble fathering children. He had a botched surgery when he was very young. As 18-year-olds, we didn’t grasp the seriousness of his male infertility. Then I realized something was wrong with me, too.’
“My husband’s counts had dropped to almost nothing. Six live sperm were found. Six! No six thousand. Just six. We got a letter in the mail. The yearly fee to keep his sperm frozen was due. It was hundreds of dollars. We had to make a decision about our future– right now. At 26 years old, I VOLUNTARILY had a hysterectomy. Then, we got the call.”
‘Jeremy had no intention of having more children or getting married again. We tied the knot, and started the process of reversing his vasectomy. My first thought was, ‘Here we go.’
“I told Jeremy, ‘I just don’t feel right.’ He took me to the ER. I had a bad feeling. ‘I’m sorry, but you are normal, so we really have no answers.’ I remember asking him, ’Do you even care?'”
‘You’re so lucky, you won’t have to get fat.’ She walked away laughing. Anger ran through my body.’ Woman’s harrowing journey with infertility, 3 failed adoptions
“She had recently given birth and stood there holding her adorable, tiny, perfect baby as the words came out of her mouth. I remember the pain and shock as she said those words to me. I cried into my pillow, ‘I’m not lucky, I am cursed.‘ But it wasn’t the end of our story.”
‘My miscarriage crushed me. I screamed and cried in the nursery closet, clenching my son’s wubby so hard my palms bled. I was inconsolable.’
“Now you’re left exhausted, thinking what the hell did we just do? Am I an imposter because I failed? I flipped my mindset. It felt good to dive into something again, which started with ripping up all the carpet in the upstairs of our house. There was no sense in avoiding a room meant for a nursery when I could change it into a usable space.”
I was quite surprised by how white she was. ‘Perhaps she’s just very fair in complexion,’ I thought. I envied other black babies and thought, ‘Why me? How did I get black and white twins?’
“The first time I saw her, I wondered if the nurse was handing me my baby, or someone else’s. I waited a few seconds for someone to tell me there was a mix up. ‘She’s so beautiful,’ the nurse said. My husband was also in denial, but reality was staring us in the face.”
‘The pain radiated from my stomach to my legs. I threw up. Finally, the fetus came out. I caught a glance of the baby in the toilet, before flushing it down.’
“I laid in the doctor’s office. Brandon stood there recording the whole thing, expecting to document the most exciting moment of our lives. She started asking me strange questions that seemed crazy at the time. It wasn’t until days later it hit me.”
‘We went in thinking it’d be a fling. Neither of us had been part of a same-sex couple. Months in, we decided to come out to our families. It was all or nothing. It went as badly as it could have.’
“Up until that point, they had presumed we were just good friends. My parents believed they had done something wrong in raising me and asked me to keep the relationship a secret. We didn’t know anyone like us, and we didn’t have any role models. We had to put our faith in each other and in science.”
‘She’s been promising her baby to 4 other families.’ We’d been scammed by our birth mother. Tears streaming, I hoped it was a bad dream. All I wanted was to be a mother.’
“At that same ultrasound, while holding the hand of another adoptive mother, she was texting me details of the visit and sex of the baby. She’d ‘panic’ and ask for more money so she wouldn’t change her mind and take him away from us. She knew all about me and my infertility. She knew exactly what she was doing.”
