She said:

Jess posted first, and said it all so well. Although his post started with imagining what this day would look like throughout the last six years, and if I'm being honest, I never really did let myself imagine this specific moment so it is feeling quite surreal now that it is here. This has been a long journey for us, and in the beginning I would imagine cute announcement moments, picture a nursery, think of a name and add it to a list, and I even started reading a book about pregnancy once. But over and over again, we didn't get to move forward. Eventually, I stopped daydreaming about those fun parts and instead focused on reading about fertility, changing my diet, taking every supplement that any of my doctors even hinted might be helpful, consenting to every fertility testing procedure, exercising more, and even buying the gimmicky high-tech hormone trackers when the cheaper paper strip tests are probably just fine. Our goal was to have a child. But the first fertility clinic said they didn't know why it wasn't working and I should lose weight, so we switched to another fertility clinic (and I lost a significant amount of weight just in case the were right?), and they ran some more tests and said we'd probably be fine trying unmedicated cycles at home, and after five years we still didn't have a child and there was no medical reason why. It was impossible not to keep running through all the things I didn't do right—the advice from the books I'd decided didn't work for me and my life, the diet I couldn't stick to for more than a few days because what even is a diet of just bacon, ice cream, butter, fat, and red meat?!, the ovulation test I knew I'd taken too late, the exercise that stopped when everything felt too hard after yet another negative pregnancy test, are my medications impacting things or should I wing it with the anxiety and adhd for a while?, etc. I became too focused on blaming myself and working to make a pregnancy happen to keep dreaming about what everything after a positive test and a tiny peanut on an ultrasound would be like.

We coped in different ways throughout it all, sometimes leaning on friends and family and sometimes keeping things to ourselves just to avoid giving yet another negative progress update, spending time on hobbies, throwing ourselves into work, we both went back for an MSW somewhere along the way, growing our family with frenchies, and, as Jess mentioned, really hitting our stride with dessert. This past summer we began working with a new fertility clinic and our doctor truly seemed to understand how much this journey has cost us (emotionally, physically, and financially!) and was determined to help us make our dream come true. She was (almost) as crushed as we were when we learned in November that even IVF wouldn't be a path forward for us. We still had options like donated eggs or embryos, but there was still uncertainty about if I could carry any pregnancy and it was a major adjustment for us to learn that our future child would officially have no genetic connection to either of us.

So where Jess said this isn't the announcement he imagined, it is also an announcement that I often couldn't imagine out of fear that it would never happen for us. But sometimes dreams come true in the most unexpected and unplanned ways. Thanks to an incredible friend—our surrogate and a most cherished member of our chosen family—we finally have a human Stevens baby joining the French fries this August!

Since the moment we jumped into this wild dream come true, I have been asked many questions about announcing and baby showers and nurseries and parenting and so on and my answer so many times has been, "well I don't know, we've never made it this far." Our surrogate asked me about pregnancy books and vitamins and that was even my answer to her! I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to start dreaming up a life for this baby boy. And we can't wait to raise him knowing what it means to be surrounded by people who love deeply and authentically, and that family is built through love, support, and community—not genetics alone.

I know this has been a long post, but as someone who has at times felt intense sadness when seeing baby announcements pop up on social media and has at times just felt like the sheer number of baby announcements popping up each day was some kind of cosmic joke rubbing my infertility in my face, I can't share this announcement that brings me so much joy without acknowledging how difficult the road to here has been. To others battling infertility and feeling discouraged, I hope you do find moments to dream along the way. Sometimes dreams do come true, even if in the most unexpected ways.

Again Jess is right—there aren't enough words to thank someone for a gift like this, but we'll keep trying anyway. We are so incredibly grateful. To our surrogate, to her supportive partner who has been putting up with her cravings like a champ, and to all of the friends and family that have been here for us on this wild journey. And to baby Stevens, a pomegranate-sized source of oh-so-much joy and a forever reminder to keep dreaming.