Impatiently Waiting for our Miracle(s)

 For the love of God, can we please quit pointing our damn fingers?! Guess who you have control over? YOURSELF. That’s it. Literally. I don’t even have “control” over my 19 month old twins – because they are human beings with their own thoughts and emotions. I can steer them as best I can to be good people. I can raise them to be kind and loving and to do their best. But I cannot control them. I cannot change their actions. I cannot make every decision for them – even as 19 month olds (have you tried to dress a toddler who doesn’t want to be dressed in that moment???) What I can do is set the best example possible. I can work on myself. I can show them how to care for others. I can use kind words when talking to and about people. We are all individual people. We are all entitled to our own opinions. And those opinions are going to differ from time to time. And that’s okay. Stop blaming others for issues in the world. I’m so damn tired of seeing people make broad statements abou...

Last week I was having a day. You know, those days where you just feel sorry for yourself and can’t seem to get it together. Our upstairs AC had gone out the week before which caused us to replace the whole thing. Yes, that was a big financial strain, but more than that I was so anxious about someone being in our house. Someone that I had no idea where he’d been and who he’d been in contact with, coming in and out. And then our dryer quit working, just as I was about to start the 8 loads of laundry I had been putting off for two weeks. So we’d have one more repair person in the house. And then the babies fought their naps all day. I was just over it all. So I grabbed my last pair of clean ankle socks from the drawer and took babies outside to sit in the empty blow-up baby pool for snack time. The weather was perfect, so I was hoping that would help us all. I got us all situated in the baby pool and looked down to realize which socks I had on. Socks I hadn’t worn since September o...

I’ve stared at a blank page on my screen several times over the last few weeks, trying to find the words. Today I’m committed to sharing, no matter how those words come out. So please bear with me. Over the last few months, I’ve dealt with some serious anxiety. And I’ve avoided sharing. Because I had babies recently. And often the response is, “You’re a new mom, it’s normal to have anxiety.” And that’s true. It is normal to have “new mom” anxiety, and to have a new level of stress that comes with raising tiny humans. However, what I’ve been dealing with is so much more. I wake up in the middle of the night with a pit in my stomach and have to catch my breath. I often think about losing my husband or one of our babies, and I spiral into a pit of anxiety. Every time I walk up and down the stairs with a baby in my arms, I am anxious that they are suddenly going to throw themselves out of my arms and go over the railing. If Reid doesn’t do something for the babies the exact way I wou...

I've been pretty quiet over here lately. Truth is, I'm somewhere in between wanting to soak up every single second I have with these babies (and making the most of what free time I do have) and knowing I have an amazing opportunity to educate others on post transplant and post "trying-to-conceive" life. And I struggle with sharing the hard days because as hard as some of them feel, I constantly have a voice in the back of my head saying, "but these struggles are for good reasons". As we get closer to Christmas I have such mixed feelings. I have butterflies in my stomach thinking about the fact that this is our first Christmas with not one but TWO babies. And Reid is almost one year post liver transplant (how is that possible?!) And then I think of all of the families, the Sparks in particular, that will be experiencing their first Christmas without a loved one. And the couples who thought for sure THIS would be the Christmas that they'd have a baby in ...

Let me tell you about a little girl who has stolen our hearts, but almost never came to be. After three natural pregnancy losses and two rounds of IVF (in-vitro fertilization), we started our third round of IVF in the summer of 2018. Two of our pregnancy losses were due to chromosome issues so we did PGS (Pre-implantation Genetic Screening – checking the chromosomes of embryos for abnormalities) testing for our first two rounds of IVF. All (4) of those embryos were deemed “abnormal”… they either had an extra chromosome or they were missing one. And they were all issues that were not compatible with life. So going into round 3 we were looking for a “fresh start”. To our surprise, our doctor (who is amazing at thinking “outside of the box”) suggested we forgo the PGS testing for our 3 rd round. Each of our chromosome abnormalities, including two of the pregnancy losses, were all different abnormalities (it was a different chromosome missing or extra each time). So he thought it wa...

Today marks one month since Reid was wheeled into the Operating Room for his liver transplant. One month since our lives changed forever. That was the best day, but I’ll be honest – it was also the hardest day of my life. I don’t think we were fully prepared for the emotions that would surround that day. And it’s just now catching up to us that this happened. One month ago he received the ultimate gift. He received the gift of life. The gift of not living with his disease, Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis, and all of the symptoms that came with it. The gift of not having to worry every day that cancer was taking over his liver. The gift of looking forward to watching his babies be born, and not having to worry how long he’d be around to raise them. The gift of no longer wondering whether he would ever get the liver transplant he needed. An absolutely priceless gift. I don’t even know that I can properly vocalize the emotions we felt in the 33 hours leading up to him being taken bac...

It’s been quite a while since I’ve given a general update on us. If you’ve been following our Facebook or Instagram pages, then you know that our final embryo transfer took and we are pregnant with twins! We are thrilled, and so far everything has looked great as we are a little over 17 weeks today. While we are so grateful for the two miracles growing inside of me, I would be lying if I said we don’t have some added stress. And I’m not just talking about the regular stress of having a baby, or the extra stress of having two at once. There’s always this looming question of “what will happen with Reid’s health?” Over the last several weeks that stress has intensified as we get closer to “crunch time”. Last week we went to Reid’s 3-month check in with the Houston transplant team. As I sat in the waiting room and took my typical picture of my “expect miracles” shirt, I saw my bump. And the reality hit me even harder, that we are bringing twins into this world and my husband is st...

In June of 2014, just three months after we were married, Reid was diagnosed with Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC).  His doctor explained that PSC is an auto-immune condition in which the bile ducts in his liver were very scarred, and could eventually lead to a liver transplant (the only treatment for this disease) or cancer in the bile ducts (cholangiocarcinoma), which is very deadly. There is no cure for PSC, and it would be a waiting game to see how it would affect his body. There was no "typical" timeline as the disease affects everyone differently. At the time, we weren't exactly sure what to expect. I remember we went to breakfast after that doctor's appointment, to discuss what we learned and process it. To be totally honest, Reid was quite upset. He saw it as a death certificate (which is completely opposite of his usually optimistic attitude). I was of the mindset that it was all a MAYBE. Maybe he would need a liver transplant. Maybe he would...

I am so excited to share the story of our first potential living donor with you. The conversations with this guy, and the selflessness of his offer, have touched our hearts in so many ways. In January of this year, I woke up to a Facebook message from a high school friend, Desmond Parker. And I laid in bed crying as I read it. He couldn’t sleep the night before and decided to re-activate his Facebook account. The first thing he saw in his timeline was a blog post that I’d written with an update on Reid’s health. And something in him said “I need to help”. He spent the next hour or so researching living donor transplants before messaging me, and he “couldn’t find a reason why NOT to do it.” His message said that he wanted to be tested to see if he was a match for my husband. Y’all, I hadn’t talked to this guy in several years. He had never met my husband. He felt no obligation to us other than we had a need, and he wanted to help (cue the tears). Dez checked all of the boxes...

So, we did this thing. Almost two weeks ago we went in for a “secret” embryo transfer. We thought, “how cool would it be if we could surprise our friends and family with good news?!” so we didn’t share publicly about this transfer. Although, if I’m being completely honest, that wasn’t the only reason we didn’t share. I was also trying to protect our hearts, and keep us all focused on Reid’s transplant journey.   On August 1 st , we transferred one of our day-6 “good fair fair” embryos. We had weeks of prep leading up to the transfer, which included oral estrogen and a new nightly injection of progesterone in oil (PIO). We remained “cautiously optimistic.” And until this past Monday, I really believed that it had worked and we were pregnant. All of my hormone levels had been right in range and my progesterone was higher than it had ever been before. This was it. But it wasn’t. Our official “beta” (blood test to confirm pregnancy) wasn’t set until Wednesday, the 15 th...

Hi, friends. Okay, my head has stopped spinning (a little) since our trips to Cleveland and Alabama. And we have a plan (ha – that’s funny). I should say we have some ideas of potential plans (which have already changed since I started typing this). But you all know how our “planning” has gone so far. So we’ll throw some ideas out there and hope something sticks. Both trips were very productive. But also exhausting. Sitting in hospitals waiting and trying to make sure you ask all of your questions and absorbing all of the information is hard work! The last day of our travels, I felt the same as I do after a big move or event. You spend all this time planning, and then it comes and you are left processing your thoughts and figuring out how happy you are with the outcome. I have spent the last two months researching and talking to so many transplant centers and doctors and nurses, and working to get medical records sent where they need to go. All of that led up to the last two week...

On June 14 th , we went in for our first ever embryo transfer. Since we weren’t PGS testing this time, our doctor suggested we go for a day-5 fresh transfer. We agreed that we would make a game-time decision as to whether we would transfer one or two. And we ended up transferring two morula embryos. Since that day our emotions have been up and down. I started out being so optimistic and surprisingly calm (so calm that Reid felt he needed to be the nervous wreck to counterbalance). I was quite confident this would work, and we’d be celebrating a pregnancy soon. Our doctor’s office had me come in last Monday (4 days past transfer) to check my progesterone and estrogen levels (both hormones they have you take to better the chances). Levels came back within normal range, and I was so happy to see that (we almost always have to add more hormones during any pregnancy). On Thursday of that same week, however, it was a different story. My hormone levels dropped and the doctor wanted ...

Lately I’ve had a couple of conversations with men who are facing infertility with their wives. And it got me thinking about all of the things that my husband has done right throughout this process. It must be so hard for men to know exactly what to do for their wives as we feel all the feels of infertility. I’m not going to say that infertility is harder on women than men, because I don’t necessarily believe that. But I do believe that men and women process their emotions differently. As does each individual person. So I’m not going to sit here and say “this is what you should do for your wife”, or “this is what you need”. I’m no expert, and every person is different. What I will do is share what my husband has done for me that has helped me through infertility and pregnancy loss. And maybe there are some nuggets in there that you can take and use for yourself. I’m by no means saying that my husband is a perfect husband, and he does all the right things. He and I had to really lear...

2:00 in the morning, and I’m wide awake. Let me tell you something about myself… I very very rarely have issues sleeping. Like I can count on one hand the times that I haven’t been able to sleep through the night. I’m that person that will wake up, roll over, and go straight back to sleep. But tonight I’m wide awake. Today was a rough day. Hell, the last two weeks have been rough. My husband is believed to have cancer. In the bile ducts. Which is the thing that we’ve feared the most over the last four years . And the worst part? They can’t even prove it with biopsies, because it’s that far into his bile ducts, and that hard to detect. Our saving grace was always, “if he gets cancer, as long as we catch it in time, we’ll be able to automatically get exception points on the transplant list, and that will move him up the list quickly.” But we can’t even do that. I feel stuck. And afraid. Two weeks ago, Reid had a Spyglass (ERCP) procedure because his Houston transpla...