Finding Hope: Melissa's Story

For most people, the last thing they would ever expect to hear about me is that I suffer from any kind of fertility issues. I am a 25 year old married woman with two toddlers, born just 13 months apart. But, the reality is the road to the two miracles I have was a very long and difficult journey.

That journey to my husband and I becoming parents started just a few months after we were married. I found out I was pregnant, but suffered an early pregnancy loss at 5 weeks. I was told it was very common for women to loss their first pregnancy and after that, many women go on to have no further complications in any subsequent pregnancies. We mourned the loss of a child, but had no idea anything else was wrong. Nothing could have prepared us for what came next.

Fast forward six months. The spring of 2009 was a very exciting time for us. I was finishing up my last two classes of college, enjoying being on staff at our church, nearing our one year wedding anniversary, and oh, of course, super excited we were expecting another BABY! We were nervous in the beginning about the possibility of having another miscarriage, but once the first trimester past, nervousness got replaced by sheer excitement that we were going to have a baby!

Everything starting getting so real. I was feeling the baby move inside me. I could see my little belly growing. We started picking out baby names and planning out how we would decorate the nursery. The next exciting step was an ultrasound, and of course, finding our our baby’s gender!

When the day arrived for our ultrasound, I was so excited! My husband didn’t have a lot of time off saved up at his job, so we decided he would go to work and save the time off for when the baby actually came. So I headed off to my ultrasound, alone. I didn’t think anything of going by myself. I never knew how much I would come to regret that decision.

Sitting in the ultrasound room waiting for the technician, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. I was so excited I was having a hard time sitting still. As the ultrasound technician prepped, I was so thrilled knowing I would get to see our little baby!

And then time stopped.