To catch yourself up on the first two parts of this series, click here for Part 1, and here for Part 2.

This post will broadly cover from where the last post left off, to now. This is more about catching up to speed on our baby story, and then the rest of this series will be dedicated to support, tips, insights, updates, and more. This post contains very sensitive content, that may be triggering for those who have experienced miscarriage and/or infertility. I hope it will help you to feel less alone.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage, Then Comes…

Josh and I got married on June 23, 2012. We started talking about marriage and kids really early in our dating relationship, and we both agreed we didn’t want to wait very long to start having children. We decided we would wait at least a year, maybe two, before we began adding to our family.

In August 2012 I experienced a very early miscarriage. I had been on birth control, and a surprise pregnancy had not even crossed our minds. I recognized this bleeding for what it was, due to my previous miscarriage, and took a belated pregnancy test. Sure enough, we were losing our first baby together. We grieved, we talked, and eventually we decided to move up our timeline. We no longer wanted to wait a year or more to have kids; we wanted kids now! We didn’t jump in right away, but in April 2013 we began trying to get pregnant. How hard could it be?

When we were newly married, Josh and I were living in Missouri, and right before our one year anniversary, we moved back home to Colorado. When I wasn’t immediately pregnant in May, I was let down but figured the stress of the move probably didn’t allow for optimal baby-making. We would keep trying! Months went by… and more months… and more months. I finally went to my gynecologist, asking for help. She ran a couple of tests and then called to inform me that I had PCOS, I would need to be on medication for the rest of my life to avoid all sorts of scary health issues, and it would be very hard to have a baby.

I was devastated. Josh was pretty upset with the way the news was delivered, and did some of his own research. No, this wasn’t a slow death sentence. No, it wouldn’t be impossible to get pregnant. We started making some changes to support my body, and kept trying. I switched doctors, had more tests, and did everything they suggested. I was told to try three rounds of Clomid, to help me ovulate, but after round two the doctor made me stop due to over-stimulated ovaries. We kept going, thinking surely at some point it would happen. Still, we were now into years of trying, with no luck. We kept going, and in October 2015, while we were visiting Josh’s grandparents in upstate New York, I sat in a tiny bathroom and stared at two pink lines. We were finally pregnant!

That trip was amazing. I was on cloud 9 the entire time. It was Fall (my favorite), we were visiting cider mills and walking through old castles, and I was finally pregnant with our little miracle baby! We flew home, and during the flight I started to cramp a bit. It had me worried, so I took another test when we got home. Still positive! I kept testing over the next two weeks, and the tests started to get more faint. Eventually, they were fully negative. But I wasn’t bleeding, or even cramping anymore! We went to the doctor and they did bloodwork, saying they’d call back with the results. There’s a whole long story here about them losing the fax with my results, etc. but essentially it meant that I didn’t hear back from them until late the next day. They informed me that my hcg was too low, and that I was losing the pregnancy. I asked about the bleeding, and they said it would start at anytime, then promptly hung up on me.

Five weeks later, I still had not bled, and I was developing a rash on my body. I was feeling sick, and so tired. I went in to urgent care to figure out what was wrong with me. After several questions that were leaving the poor medical staff stumped, one finally thought to ask me if I was pregnant. I explained that I had been pregnant recently, but that I still hadn’t passed the baby. What came next was as close to panic as I’ve ever seen in a medical professional. This poor man was as white as a ghost, and told me to lie down. He checked all of my vitals again, and long story short, he gave me the meds I would need to go home and pass our baby, along with meds to treat my rash and infection. He very calmly but sternly informed me that I could have died, and should have gone back to my doctor when I didn’t pass the baby. I told him I hadn’t known, because they had just said it would happen and didn’t tell me anything else. He was livid. So was I!

This was the second miscarriage in our marriage, and it was the start of a long string of loss. We would go through windows of time where we couldn’t get pregnant at all, and then suddenly we would get pregnant 3 times in a row, and lose each one.

Perhaps one of our most devastating was the loss of our little boy, Oliver. Please be aware that what I’m about to describe may be disturbing. This was in 2019. We still didn’t make it very far with him, but further than we ever had before. I experienced labor at home in the shower, and caught his tiny body in my hand. He had teeny legs, and one and a half arms. He had the teensiest bit of that embryonic tail left, but it was almost completely gone. It took a while, after his loss, to try again. But we did, and we kept losing.

This all led to a LOT of heartache, stress, strain on our marriage and our lives, and some serious depression. We had many difficult conversations, including whether or not we should even keep trying. We stopped trying as earnestly, giving ourselves a slight break, and decided to enjoy some time child-free, and maybe try to adjust to that life long-term.

In 2021, we had a very long and honest conversation about what we wanted in life, and realized we weren’t content with giving up— not yet. In our time with different doctors, we had asked about IVF, and had been told we would not be good candidates. The reasoning given to us was that I couldn’t seem to carry to term. So we discussed another option… what if we adopted our baby? We did a LOT of research, talked to friends of ours who adopted, and we took our time. But later on in 2021, we applied and got accepted to an adoption agency in Colorado!

To be honest, we were ridiculously excited. Adoption comes with a lot of grief on all sides, and we were keenly aware of that (and made even more aware as we went through our various trainings and did even more research), but we still couldn’t help but feel that this was it. It was finally going to be our turn, and someone would choose us, and we would have our baby! We needed that hope desperately, because at that point we had experienced seven miscarriages in total.

In 2022, Josh’s dad Nate was diagnosed with a pretty aggressive cancer. We put our adoption trainings on pause, and Josh went to Arizona to help his mom care for his ailing dad. The night Josh arrived, his father passed away.

He stayed in Arizona for a month, helping his mom with everything she needed after Nate’s passing. When Josh came home, we had healing to do, and then a tree fell on our house. We took care of the home, got it ready for inspection, and finally started our trainings again.

The day I’m writing this, by the way, is in April of 2026. At this time, we have still not been placed with a child. I have since been diagnosed not only with PCOS, but also severe endometriosis, and a blood clotting disorder.

I am not telling you all of this to depress you. I am not looking for pity, or even rage on our behalf. I am sharing our story because I know exactly what it feels like to go through all of these types of things and feel totally alone.

You are not alone.

This is not just you.

And it is not your fault.

Excuse me, try again. Don’t skip over that. Don’t hold your breath in that line, and let every reason it might not be true run through your mind, and then keep reading. Stop.

Say it out loud.

It is not my fault.

Like I said, I know. I know what it’s like, and I know how we tend to think, and I know we want to have more control over this so that we have a way to fix it. But blaming yourself isn’t real control, and it isn’t real at all.

The fact of the matter is, infertility is common. Miscarriage is common. Around 1 in 6 people around the world will experience infertility. Approximately 1 in 4 people will experience a miscarriage (and that’s just when we know for sure). It’s a big club, and I’m sorry if you’re in it.

But this is why I’m telling our story, and why I’ll be continuing this series with information, support, resources, and more. You deserve to feel supported in this time. You deserve to have information presented to you clearly. You deserve to feel seen in your grief. And you deserve to feel hope.

That’s right, I said hope.

Because this story isn’t over…

… I have more to share.

I have hope to share.

That will be coming soon. 😉

Please, feel free to comment, message, etc and talk to me. I would love to be here to listen to your story, support you, love on you, and just be someone here for you who gets it.

To all my fellow club members, dealing with infertility and/or loss: I love you.

And to my babies no longer here: I love you, forever.

For: Mason Grey, Reed August, Anabal Serenity, Everly Isabel, Solar Royal, Oliver James, Ryley Sen, Ellery Hollis, Atlas Rowan, Sumler Ellis, Ellie Star, and Booker Endri.