For anyone who knows my wife and me, you may already know the trials which we have recently faced. For anyone who doesn’t know us, here is a short explanation to help you understand our purpose for starting Baby Boodle.
In the beginning of 2014, my wife and I found out that we were having a baby. Everything was so perfect. We had been planning on trying for a daughter and at our 12 week scan, we found out that it was a girl. We were both over the moon. We had decided on her name; Belle Tigerlily Stephenson.
The pregnancy had not been an easy one for my wife. From the very beginning there were things that didn’t seem right. But at that 12 week scan we were told that everything was perfect and that our baby was growing perfectly and all the signs were fantastically normal.
Three weeks after that scan, at 15 weeks, we lost our baby. No one could give us any specific reason why the baby’s heart had stopped and why the amniotic fluid had dried up. We were shattered and devastated by the tragic news and so were all our family and friends.
The one comfort through all of this was the fact that we could try again at a later stage.
My wife had to go through the trauma of birthing Belle and then she had to have a DNC. After she was released from hospital, we decided we would take a week off and go away somewhere quiet and mourn the loss of our baby daughter. That week passed and that following weekend was Father’s Day, which was a very tough time for me having just lost Belle. That Father’s Day would prove to be much worse than we could have ever expected.
It was around midnight on that Father’s Day and my wife started having serious pains in her abdomen. It got so bad that I eventually rushed her to hospital once again. To cut a long story short, my wife ended up having a burst cyst on the back of her womb. She had an emergency operation in which the Doctors told me that my wife very nearly died. She was already in the third stage of septicemia and moving fast towards organ failure. To save her life, the doctors had to remove her womb in a full emergency hysterectomy along with some other organs. The doctors did not believe that she would last the night in ICU. But my wife is one tough cookie as anyone who knows her will tell you and God had bigger plans.
A Double Trauma.
Within a month, we had gone from being ecstatic, expectant parents, to losing our baby and then losing the chance to ever have a biological child ever again. I was shattered as I have always believed I would have my daughter. I wanted to be wrapped around my little girls finger. I wanted to be her first love. All of that was taken away in a blink of an eye.
The Saving Grace
The big miracle occurred when the doctor told us that one ovary was completely untouched by the infection. The infection had been so bad, that organs had gone gangrene and the doctors were very sure that my wife would not survive more than a day in ICU, but it had not touched this one ovary.
The great thing about this is that when the ovary was checked out by the gynaecologist, he told us that the ovary is still perfect and producing eggs.
The Hope and Dream.
It is now our hope and dream to be able to have our baby through surrogacy and we’re blogging about this journey on Baby Boodle.
The process is extremely costly, with many different paths leading to the ultimate end goal. There are many legal procedures, medical as well as physical and psychological procedures. These costs can end up running into tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Rands.
Our goal is to raise money through various ways. We will sell items, do fund raisers and put in as much effort and work into this as we are capable of. We do not want to take out a massive loan and get into huge debt and we believe that God will bless us as we take the necessary steps forward in faith.
This blog will keep track of our journey from heartache to joyous celebration as we welcome our baby into the world, and each person that contributed or helped out will be able to say that they were a part of our journey and a part of our greatest happiness.
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