30 Jul Miracle Pregnancy After Radiation

Like many hopeful mothers, Mother’s Day 2018 was a bag of mixed emotions for me. While our fertility journey made me appreciate and respect the role of “mother” more than I ever had in the past, I ached for the year I’d celebrate the holiday as a mother to the child we’d been praying for. Little did I know that I’d go into labor exactly one year later — on Mother’s Day 2019.

When I was 7, I was diagnosed with a rare disease that, if left untreated, would be deadly. Part of the treatment plan for the disease was radiation, which resulted in my fertility diagnosis of premature ovarian failure. Since I was a child, reputed and well-intended doctors have told me that I would not be able to have children due to the radiation I received for my disease.

I don’t know what I was looking for other than to feel understood when I walked into my first Moms in the Making meeting, but I left that night feeling more hopeful and comforted than I could have ever imagined. In the meetings that followed, I learned so many transforming lessons about myself, my fertility diagnosis and journey, and my faith, mainly: (1) I was not alone or forgotten; (2) Google and statistics were not always my friend or right; and (3) God always was.

In learning these things, my anxieties of how & when we would grow our family lessened to a new-found confidence that we would be parents someday, whether through the privilege of adoption, the blessing of fertility treatments, or on our own. To be honest, not in a million years did I think that the “on our own” option was possible, but God has proven time and time again to turn impossible things into real miracles. Parker Joseph Lee Williams is ours!

Liz Williams