“Our love story began in Provo, Utah, in the fall of 2010. I was a California girl who came to Utah to attend BYU and stayed in Utah after being offered an elementary teacher job. Lance grew up in Utah and was working full time for an online education company. From the moment we started dating, we were inseparable! We were married in April 2011 and I got a sweet two-for-one deal since Lance had a delightful son from a prior marriage!
Married life was great and our happiness was more than we could have imagined. Everything was going really well until we suffered our first miscarriage. Prior to that time, it hadn’t crossed our minds that we might have difficulty having children or that we might not be able to ever have children.
We suffered miscarriage after miscarriage and our devastation grew and grew as we visited with doctors, underwent surgeries and procedures, tried out medications, and kept having miscarriages and failed results.
For multiple years we suffered through the pain and discouragement of infertility. Pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and seeing families with children were a constant reminder of the unfulfilled hopes and wishes in our life. The hardship of infertility takes a toll on you and we worked to try to work through the sadness and add happiness into our lives. We went to counseling, support groups, and tried to do hobbies and fun activities like taking a cruise to create happiness in a life that was very different than we planned. After years of doctor visits, medication, surgeries, and procedures we decided to try IVF.
On my birthday in December of 2014, we got the test results back and found out we were pregnant! We were ecstatic but also really nervous that we might have yet another miscarriage. We attempted to be positive and hopeful the 7-week ultrasound would give us positive results for the first time in all of our pregnancies.
The 7-week ultrasound occurred on Lance’s birthday in January. On the day of the ultrasound I was so worried the ultrasound was going to give us bad news. As the screen was moved in my direction, I deliberately hide my face, too scared of possibly seeing a passed away baby.
Lance recorded the procedure, and as you can see from the video I was shocked and beyond excited that not only did it show that we had one baby with a heartbeat, but that we had two!
Having a baby with a heartbeat was a first for us — we had never made it this far!
We went on to have a successful pregnancy and are so happy to have our hopes and dreams come true.
Our twins, Landon and Zachary, are delightful. The twins are now 2-and-a-half and are doing great.
It has been a crazy ride raising them so far, but it also has been crazy fun and joyful. Our family is also really grateful that we have been able to add another child to our family. Our youngest, Reece, just turned five months!”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Nikki Bertola, 34, of Mount Pleasant, Utah.
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