Baby Rebro coming June, 2010

Just when I said that things could not get anymore perfect, they do!! We found out early October that I am pregnant!! This has been a very personal, long and heartbreaking road for us. Some of you know what we've been through, but because it is so personal, I realize that not everyone knows what a true miracle this child is.

Our first obstacle was my breast cancer because the treatment killed my ovaries, put me through menapause and I was never supposed to be able to have any more children. We knew this going into our marriage, but after a year of chemo, mother nature came back to visit me and although we were shocked, we thought that it just had to happen for a reason. Long story short, we had been seen by 4 different fertility doctors trying to see if we could have children. I am at a high risk for a cancer reoccurrance if I got pregnant, so Joe and I made the decision that if we couldn't do it on our own, then it wasn't meant to be, we didn't want to force the risk and we would explore another option because any fertility treatment was putting me at a higher risk by taking hormones. We were blind sided by the news that Joe also had a fertility issue and he went through a surgery that did not improve things for him afterwards. We explored everything from egg donation, to even having my sister in law Genell offer to carry for us, but when we found out that we couldn't concieve biologically, we decided to go another route. From here we sat through hours and hours of adoption meetings on domestic, international and embryo adoption. Finally, we had decided to become Foster parents to adopt a foster child. Cody being older, we just felt that it was a good fit for our family and there are so many kids without homes. We attended the classes and had our reference packets out to family and friends and those were all ready to go. We needed to have a home study done, but we had to put it on hold because of our move to Grafton. Keep in mind that over these 3 years, we have been on an emotional roller coaster every time I was late, we were slapped in the face with a negative pregnancy test. I was irregular since it returned and so it really made for a lot of false hope at times. Once we moved so much was taken off of our shoulders. I had gotten the body aches, chills and felt like doo doo. It was a little unusual since I don't get sick often at all. Jokingly, Joe bought a pregnancy test and asked me if I had taken a test. I did not want to given how the last 3 years of them had turned out. Monday morning after Joe left for work, I got up for work and decided to give it one more shot while I was getting ready and the results turned positive right away! I thought that I had gotten a false positive, so I used the second test about an hour later and that too was positive. I was now in shock and disbelief, thinking the whole box of tests were bad. I left for work but instead of going to work I played hooky and drove myself to my Doctors office instead. With no appointment, I went in and they were nice enough to run a test for me. When my Doctor came in she confirmed with tears in her eyes that I was pregnant. I put my face in my hands and cried for about 10 minutes! Happy tears, but ones of shock and disbelief as well.

I called Joe who was working and told him things were fine but since I was on this side of town I'd meet him for lunch. I bought him a baby gift and presented it to him at work. It took a second to connect the dots, but he got it. We laughed, cried and sat there sort of speechless because we just couldn't believe this was happening. We took Cody out for ice cream later and got him a book of stories about brothers. His first response was "Did we get a foster child?" We said, no not exactly, then he said "adoption?" and we said, no not exactly...then with tears in his eyes, he looked at me and said "You?" I shook my head yes and we all cried a little more and once again had few words other than this is just some serious divine intervention.

Just after finding out, we heard from my parents that they were going to come in from Florida in November. We had decided that this was too big of news to tell them over the phone or email and since they were coming, we just had to tell them in person. This is why the news may be getting to some of you late, because we were afraid that the surprise would leak out somehow, so we kept it a secret. Now that our parents know we can share the wonderful news with everyone. We did ask our parents to help spread the good news just in case we missed someone.

I am now 3 months along and our expected due date is June 12th, 2010. I've been very naucious, which is a good thing for pregnancy, and have been extememly tired. I am high risk and will be followed throughout by my oncologist. It is just such a miracle! No fertility help after all was needed. Three out of the 4 fertility Doctors had told us this would never happen, and the 4th Doctor gave us an 8% chance with fertility drugs. I guess we proved them all wrong. Had we known, we would have moved to Grafton sooner!! We are just so happy and are really feeling blessed right now. And no, we are not going to find out what the sex of the baby is....we'll all just have to wait and be surprised!