PREFACE: This is a very LONG post telling the story about our 2 miracle babies.
While attending college, I (James) was a member of the institute's show choir. One of the song's that we performed was the song "When You Believe" from Prince of Egypt. That song ALWAYS moved me: "There can be miracles when you believe - though hope is frail, it's hard to kill. Who knows what miracles you can achieve when you believe. When you believe, somehow you will...you will when you believe."
Heather and I always wanted to have a family. Before we were engaged, we were already picking out our children's names. We wanted to have 3-4 kids, and we had 3 boy and 3 girl names all picked out. A year after we were married, we decided it was time to start our family. After several months of negative pregnancy tests, Heather decided to talk to her doctor. Her doctor advised that there were some issues, but nothing too serious. He also suggested that I also get tested. My test results were sent to Heather's doctor, and he called Heather to tell her that I also had issues, and that for us to get pregnant would be almost impossible. I knew how much Heather wanted to be a mom, and the infertility monster was upon us, and it was devastating. We had a couple in our ward that also was having some issues, and they recommended that we go to the fertility specialists at the University of Utah. Upon consulting with the doctor there, he said that with the issues that we had, that we should be able to get pregnant by going through the treatments. Before we started the treatments, we had a family fast, and our bishop gave us both a blessing. While giving Heather her blessing, he was inspired to say that a baby boy would be coming to our family. We went through 5 or 6 rounds of artificial insemination. After each attempt, we were always hopeful to see that word Pregnant on the pregnancy test. We never got that confirmation. Our doctor said the next path would be to go through in-vitro fertilization, a treatment that would cost around $10,000 and was still only around 55% likely to get us pregnant. We decided that we would start saving our money for that costly treatment.
In August 2007, while celebrating our 4 year anniversary on a cruise in Alaska, Heather started to have really bad cramps on the last night. We went to the infirmary, and the doctor gave her some pain meds and said if this continued to go to the ER as soon as we got home. The pain meds helped through the next day and the flight home, but the pain continued so we visited the ER. One of the many questions they first asked was if we were pregnant, to which we both said no and that it was almost impossible for us to get pregnant. After several tests and several hours of waiting, the doctor came to the room and told us that we, indeed, were pregnant. But because of the pain, he wanted us to come back in a few days to check the HCG levels. As you can guess, we were ecstatic! The child that we wanted to start our family was finally on their way to us. We even bought a pregnancy test just so that we could see the proof for ourselves. When we went back a few days later, we were again devastated when we learned that the pain Heather was experiencing was a miscarriage. The infertility monster came back again to rip our hopes and dreams away from us. We still were determined to have a family somehow, and that we would continue to save up for IVF.
In March 2010, my mom passed away. As we were saying our goodbyes to her, Heather and I both asked her to find our baby and help them get to us. The next month, our friends, Isaiah and Rosie adopted Addison. As we held her in our arms, we immediately knew that the way to start our family was through adoption. The cost would be about the same as IVF, and the percentage was much higher than 60%, however, the wait time could be much longer than 9 months. We started the paperwork that week, and we finally we approved to adopt (i.e. ready to be listed for birth moms to look at our profile) in September. We were so incredibly blessed that Amanda found our pass along card and contacted us in April 2011, and Miracle #1, Lucas, came to our family in July 2011. He has been an absolute blessing to our lives and we love him with all our hearts. We are eternally grateful to Amanda for her desire to place Lucas in our home.
We always knew that we didn't want Lucas to be an only child. Heather and I come from multiple child families, and we wanted Lucas to have a sibling as well. We knew that we could submit our adoption paperwork after Lucas turned 1. We started filling out the paperwork in July 2012, and we were approved again in December 2012 for round 2. This time, our doctor had to declare our level of infertility - he said that WITH medical assistance, our ability to conceive was less than 15%. We knew this time that it could be longer for a birth mother to select us, as we already had Lucas. In March, Heather started feeling sick in the mornings - she had been going to the gym 6 days a week, so she thought it could have been fatigue. She asked me to bring home a pregnancy test on my lunch break, just to rule that out because we both knew that was very unlikely. I stopped by a dollar store and bought a cheap brand, knowing I didn't want to spend a lot of money on something I knew was going to be negative. Almost immediately after taking the test, it showed positive. On my home from work that night, I of course went to the store and bought the name brand stuff, and it confirmed the cheapo's results. We were, again, ecstatic but extremely nervous. We wanted to get in to see the doctor as quickly as possible because we wanted to do whatever we could to make sure this pregnancy did not end in another miscarriage. Unfortunately the doctor wouldn't see us until we were 12 weeks pregnant, which happened to be on April 1st.
Our first appointment, we told our doctor about our history. The ultrasound technician wasn't in that day, so he did the ultrasound by himself. He was unable to see a baby and he prepped us for another miscarriage, but he wanted us to come back 2 days later to check our HCG levels. DEVASTATION, again. This time we had Lucas to comfort us, and we knew that we were already on the adoption list. When we went back on April 3rd, Heather was just expecting to be told that we had lost the baby. I was hopeful that things would work out. HCG levels were very high, so he wanted the ultrasound technician to do another ultrasound. She was able to quickly find our baby and we saw and heard the heartbeat. Complete 360 from devastation to ELATION! Miracle #2 was going to come into our lives in November - November 13th was the due date.
November 13th came and went, and still no baby. Our doctor told us our many options - wait it out, schedule a C-section, or have an induction. We decided on the induction and checked in to the hospital the night of November 19th for the first medication Heather needed to start the process going.
The morning of the 20th, they came in to administer the second dose of medication, and our doctor came a few hours later to break water. At 9:30, Heather was dilated to a 1, and by 3:30, she was at a 10. The doctor arrived at the hospital at 6:30, and at 7:01, Hadlee Maryn was born - 7 lbs 8 oz and 19.5 inches long. Hadlee means "Field of Heather", and Maryn is a combination of our mother's names - Marianne and Carolyn.
She had some breathing complications and had a lot of fluid on her lungs. They had multiple nurses working on her trying to get her oxygen levels up and rushed her quickly to the nursery. They thought they had her stabilized, but by midnight, they decided they needed to transfer her to NICU.
Heather and I went to visit her the next morning to see her covered in tubes and IV's.
As we started to feed her, they were able to wean her off of the IV, and they were able to keep weaning her off of the oxygen tubes as well. On Friday morning, she was completely off of everything and our pediatrician recommended that she be moved from NICU back to well-baby nursery, which meant she could come be in our room with us. We were so happy to finally have her with us! However, that night, when we took her to the nursery for her to get her antibiotics, they tested her jaundice levels and she had to be placed under the bilirubin lights.
After spending 1.5 days in NICU, and another 1.5 days under bilirubin lights, we got her back in our room again on Sunday morning. Lucas was finally able to come to the hospital to hold his little sister! He was completely enamored by her (and still is).
Finally on Monday morning, they ran her labs again, and everything looked much better that they said we were free to go home!
We were so surprised to come home to a welcome home sign and balloons - thanks Jess!
On Tuesday, we knew that Hadlee needed to meet Cash, her cousin who came 2 weeks before her (even though he was due 4 weeks after her).
Size comparison picture:
We were happy to be home for Thanksgiving and celebrate our little miracle family.
I feel so extremely blessed to have these 2 miracle children in my life. I absolutely love being their father, and I'm so grateful for the gospel to allow us to have an eternal family.
