Our Little Miracle

Yesterday was a great day! We witnessed a miracle of our own. Let me just start from the beginning.

Back when we first met with the fertility doctor, we came to the conclusion that we shouldn't use the hormones to trigger more eggs. If we did that, it could cause my cancer to spread since it's hormone driven, so they told us we can go a safe route where we don't use hormones but we usually only get 1-3 eggs retrieved as opposed to 6-8 eggs and then only 1 or 2 of them might survive the fertilization and freezing process. We were willing to go that route to be on the safe side. So when we went in for my ultrasound right before egg retrieval surgery, I had 2 eggs that looked they might be good, but they wouldn't know until surgery. Then, last Saturday, I went in for surgery to retrieve my eggs. After surgery when I came to, they told me there was one egg that they were able to get. I was go grateful to hear that we at least got one, but that was only the first step. It has to survive the fertilization process and then the freezing process. I had faith it would survive because I know Heavenly Father has a plan for me and my future family. The next day I received a call from the lab saying they had good news, the egg survived fertilization and is now an embryo, but the next 4 days were critical and crucial in it's survival. He told me that normally they will have 6-8 eggs to work with and then only 3-4 of them would survive the next 4 days, so it's very risky only having one egg to work with. He then told me that he didn't want to scare me, but just to inform me that it has only 30% chance of making it. My heart dropped to my stomach. I love moments where I don't know any statistics where I can base it off 100% faith, but as soon as percentages come into the picture, my faith is added with doubts. At first I felt doubtful, but I immediately decided to throw out that number and use 100% faith. I told myself every hour for the next 4 days that my embryo is growing and maturing properly. Anytime I had doubts pop into my mind, I immediately replaced them with positive thoughts about my embryo. A couple days passed and I remember the doctor at the lab telling me that if anything bad happens before the 4 days is up, they will inform me immediately. In other words, no news is good news, so that brought me some comfort. Finally 4 days passed and yesterday morning I received a call from the nurse at the fertility office. She said she wanted to update me and let me know she had great news! I immediately started smiling as tears built up in my eyes. She said, you have a healthy and good quality embryo that survived the freezing process. She then went on to say I am so lucky to have a good quality embryo, because a lot of times the embryo will survive the whole process, but may end up being a medium or low quality egg, which means it may or may not take when put inside to start a pregnancy. I immediately thanked Heavenly Father for answering my prayers and adding that extra "good quality" for our sweet little embryo.

The day I found out that it was only 30% survival rate, Tanner and I told our family and friends to pray for our embryo. I didn't tell the percentage because I knew how it affected my faith, and I needed as much faith as I could get. Our little embryo got so many prayers and I thank each and every one of you that prayed for her/him. This is our little miracle embryo.

This experience has really strengthened my testimony. I've always had a very strong testimony about the power of prayer, but each and every experience I have, continues to remind me how powerful prayer really is. My parents taught my siblings and I very well at a young age that if we have enough faith, ANYTHING can happen if it be Heavenly Father's will. I would find myself praying for everything and ever since then, I've continued to pray for things that may sound so silly to someone else, but are important to me. Time and time again, God answers each and every one of those small little prayers. It really shows how much Heavenly Father loves each and every one of us to hear and answer even our littlest, yet faith filled prayers. This whole cancer experience is really bringing my family closer together. I'm grateful it's me that has to go through this in order to bring our family closer together, rather than one of my other family members. It's a lot harder for me to watch someone I love suffer, than to be the one suffering. It really helps having such a supportive husband and having a sweet little girl to always lift my spirits. I thank my Heavenly Father for this experience that has strengthened my family and I up to this point, and I'm looking forward to seeing how much stronger our family will be coming out of this.