Hello! I’m Lara. I’m a busy toddler, who loves watching Barney, playing with water, and reading books. But the story of how I came into the world is a bit different to most other kids’ stories … You see, my parents are 1 in 6…
Not long after my mom and dad got married, they discovered that they would never be able to have children the way other mommies and daddies do. They were heartbroken, as they’d always dreamed of having human kids they could love as much as their doggy children. My mom and dad went to see all sorts of doctors, and had to make some very difficult decisions. They went through two rounds of artificial insemination, neither of which succeeded. Then they went to another doctor, who suggested IVF. My mommy and daddy were excited now – this could be the answer to their hopes and prayers! After plenty of delays and disappointments, they tried IVF four times, and not once could my mommy fall pregnant. Mom and Dad were very sad, broke and really tired from all the fertility treatments, but they still desperately wanted to have a child. They spoke to some friends and social workers about adoption. They had to answer lots of questions, fill in forms, do tests and provide all sorts of information to hopefully “prove” that they were “worthy” of being considered as adoptive parents. Eventually the happy day came when the social worker let my mommy and daddy know that they had been approved to go on the waiting list to adopt a baby. They were very excited, and my mommy kept hoping that the social worker would phone her one day with some good news…
In September 2015, my mommy and daddy decided to give IVF one last try. They hadn’t gone for any fertility treatments for over a year. In the beginning, everything went well. There were a few good embryos which started to develop. But then, while the embryos were still in the incubator at the clinic, things started to look bad. My mommy and daddy were very sad. The embryologist told them that there might not be any embryos alive to transfer back to mommy’s uterus. When the day came for the transfer, two embryos were still developing, but very slowly, and they were not looking strong. The doctor transferred the two surviving embryos anyway. Mommy prayed a lot, and although she felt very sad, she also felt more peaceful than before during the nine days that she had to wait for the blood test to tell whether or not she was pregnant.
On the day of the blood test, Mommy woke up early and did a home pregnancy test (against everyone’s advice!) She brought it to Daddy to show him. It looked like there might be a very light pink line on it. There was hope! Mommy went to the pathologists to have blood drawn (a place fraught with so many sad memories by this time), and then went on with her day, waiting anxiously for a phone call from the clinic. At about 11 o’clock that morning, Mommy’s phone rang, and the clinic sister gave her the best news she’d ever received: Jy is swanger! (You are pregnant!) Mommy phoned Daddy at work and shared the wonderful news with him. Mommy was very nervous in the first few weeks after that, worrying that I might stop developing, but I was a determined little girl from the beginning, and while I might not have been a fast grower as an embryo, I certainly caught up after that!
I’m a big girl now (I’ll be turning two this year), and my Mommy and Daddy give thanks every day for the privilege they have to be parents. It was a very long and difficult road for my Mommy and Daddy, but they tell me every day that it was worth it!
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