A year ago, I was sitting in my local hospital pre-op room anxiously awaiting a right breast mastectomy. During the pre-op testing, the nurse came back in after awaiting my results and said, “you’re pregnant!”
I was devastated.
Many women ache to hear those words, but for me, at that moment, my goal was to have my surgery and get the breast cancer out of me. I feared if I waited any longer, it would mean that my cancer would metastasize throughout my body.
My breast surgeon came in and confirmed that my surgery would have to be postponed. Two weeks later, I was in my bathroom having a miscarriage on the toilet. My progesterone numbers never rose to acceptable levels, I endured cramping and bleeding so my gynecologist prescribed me a medication that helped pass the fetal tissue.
As horrible as it sounds, I didn’t feel sadness.
You see, this made miscarriage number five for me and it was almost like I had a sense of normalcy like “this is how it will always be.”
Eight years earlier, in 2013, I was pregnant for the first time with my son, Noah. My husband and I were over the moon as we were just married and couldn’t wait to be first-time parents!
Sadly, at 17-weeks pregnant my cervix opened unexpectedly and I delivered my baby in a labor and delivery room. We were devastated, hurt and confused, but we thought this was an exception and decided to try again.
From 2014 to 2017, I had three more pregnancy losses, an early miscarriage, another 17-week delivery loss with our son Jonah, and a 22-week delivery loss with Isaiah. There was nothing wrong with any of our children. Even with the 22-week loss, I had a cervical stitch placed at 13-weeks pregnant because I learned of a condition called incompetent cervix and this was the reason for my second-trimester deliveries.
The stitch didn’t hold.
So in 2018, I had an abdominal cerclage placed by Dr. Haney in Chicago. My husband and I decided we weren’t going to try anymore but, I felt led to get the cerclage because he was one of the top physicians at the time doing the procedure and I knew he was retiring soon.
In February 2020, on my 31st birthday, I was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ.
I didn’t know what my cancer journey would look like, but there were talks of doing IVF in case I needed chemo/radiation and discussions with surgeons. Because of the pandemic canceling elective surgeries we never did IVF treatments.
During that time, I also asked God if I’m not meant to be a mom to take the desire out of my heart. My focus was to beat breast cancer and learn to be happy with what my life looked like.
Fast forward to before the end of the year, we learned we were 15-weeks pregnant!
I had been taking Tamoxifen for two months before we found out. I had a healthy high-risk pregnancy and delivered my daughter via c-section in January without complications.
Today my daughter *Kailani is four months old and if you would have told me a year ago that I would have a baby in the next year, I would have laughed in disbelief.
My hope in sharing my story is to offer encouragement and remind others that we can get through the hardest of days.
*Kailani’s name means sea and sky
