Campaign Story

Oh, where to begin. I never thought I would be here trying to tell someone our story and journey so far.

My husband and I have been together since the end of 2020. We lived in different states at the time and made it work. Even when we lived in the same state, we still lived in different cities. We’ve always made it work through all the ups and downs. We found out I was pregnant in July of 2021 and were obviously over the moon about it. We went to the first appointment together, heard the heartbeat, and fell in love. A few weeks later, he was activated and sent for hurricane relief the day I went for our second appointment in Sept of 2021. That was our first heartbreak. I found out that day there was no heartbeat. Telling him while he was gone was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, along with doing it alone that week. I had a D&C that Friday.

For the next 2 years, my husband was on various missions and I was doing monthly medication and bloodwork. After 2 years, I found out on the exact same day in July of 2023 that I was pregnant again. We were excited again with a side of anxiety. We didn’t want to get our hopes up in case it ended like the first. We went to our first appointment so worried about what the future might hold for this little one. My doctor said everything looked good so far at this time. We went weekly after that as I didn’t want anything to get missed like the first pregnancy. Weeks went by and our baby girl was growing, her heartbeat getting faster, and our worries were melting away. Things were looking “textbook perfect.” We were certain that this pregnancy was going to make it.

Week 13 came and we were excited that we had made it to the second trimester. My doctor pulled up the picture of our sweet little one only to find out that her heart had stopped too. Heartbreak number 2. The exact same timeline almost as the first baby. We lost our second little one in Sept of 2023. I was scheduled for another D&C as my body hadn’t registered this miscarriage either. After this loss, we had some extensive testing done on genetics and everything under the sun so we could see what was going on. This was when I learned about my DNA duplication for the first time.

August of 2024, pregnancy number 3 happened. We wanted to be excited and hopeful; however, after 2 losses, it’s so hard. We went to our first appointment and it was mostly just confirmation of pregnancy and seeing the little ball of cells. At our second appointment, we learned that there was no growth and my body would soon realize. After suffering our 3rd loss, my doctor suggested we see a specialist.

In October of 2024, I went to see a fertility specialist. She went over everything with me and told me that my DNA duplication was most likely the cause of the losses. Due to this, I learned that half of my eggs will have this same duplication. We were told that doing it again naturally would give us a 50/50 and we haven’t had the best odds so far. She stated that IVF was going to be our best option going forward to have the family we want. We will have to have all the testing done to find the abnormalities. This has been a long and hard road already trying to start our family so we agreed that we would give IVF a try to save us a little more heartache.