- My husband underwent treatment for lupus, so we needed to do
IVF to have our children. - Our third child was born almost two years after his death.
Sixty days away. That's it.
In 60 days, my husband, Mark, and I would be starting our next round of IVF to bring our third child into the world.
"Excited" doesn't even touch the feeling we had. After spending a whirlwind romantic vacation in Bordeaux, France, for my 40th birthday, we were more in love than ever before. We had an incredible Thanksgiving with our family and friends. And then he was gone. Mark died six days after my 40th birthday.
I went from living my best life to living my worst nightmare.
Not only was I dealing with the devastating loss of my best friend and the love of my life, but my dream of being a mom of three had just shattered at my feet.
Eventually I realized my dream of being a mom to three of Mark's children may not be over. My other two children were also born from IVF cycles. So 10 months after Mark passed, I transferred a frozen embryo from previous attempts, praying my dream could come true.
Almost one year to the day that Mark died, the doctor's office called to tell me I was pregnant with Mark's child.
My IVF journey
Dealing with fertility issues is painful in so many ways. There are blows emotionally, financially, and physically. It affects your relationships not just with your partner but with friends, family, and strangers, all of whom have an opinion or "helpful advice" to give.
Mark knew well before we met that he would most likely need fertility treatments if he wanted to have biological children. He had undergone chemotherapy to treat lupus, which meant his sperm wouldn't be healthy enough to reproduce. It wasn't a surprise when, after being married for more than three years without a pregnancy, we needed to seek out a fertility specialist.
After a failed IUI attempt and one round of IVF that ended in a miscarriage, we laid out a plan with our doctor to do a hyperstimulation to retrieve as many eggs as possible and do preimplantation genetic testing to discover how many viable embryos we'd created. Those were then frozen, and from those embryos my 5-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son were born. Then came our third.
My daughter was born almost 2 years after his death
In July 2021, 20 months after Mark passed away, I gave birth to our daughter. There was never a doubt in my mind that I wanted to bring another piece of Mark into the world. Making it happen took work, but having her was the easiest decision I've ever made.
I'm now faced with a seemingly impossible decision: With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I have to decide whether to maintain storage of the remaining embryos. I am not emotionally prepared to make it yet, but if I don't make it soon I could face criminal charges as abortion laws continue to change in my state and across the country.
Without IVF I would not have my children, and I definitely would not have been able to carry out the dream that Mark and I shared of bringing our second daughter into the world.