Where the story starts

The past few months have been an emotional roller coaster. This morning I was thinking about all that we've been through to get to this point, and when did it all start?

Before Martin and I got married we decided that we wanted babies. We talked about it a lot. How many, a girl, or a boy, may be a few. Shockingly we were not too concerned about how it would happen. I think back to it now and think that it might have had something to do with me feeling that of all the things that I was deprived of in my life due to my CF, this could not be one of them. People had kids all the time. No one stopped people from having babies, it was just one of those things. I felt like I deserved it, damn it!! So I ignored the fact that this was something that could be hard for us to do.

At that time, this was the beginning of 2006, I was not as unwell as I am now. The nature of the beast I guess. My lung function was in the high 40s to low 50s and I was on IV antibiotics every 4-5 months, so about 2-3 times a year. I had not been in the hospital for a long time, and seemed to be able to do many of the things that my peers could do. After several doctor visits (both CF and High risk OBGYN) I was given the go ahead to try to have a baby on my own. It was something that I was so happy about, and so we tried. Since this was the time before our wedding, I was not too concerned about tracking the time this took. As months passed by I never stopped and questioned why I was not getting pregnant. I just thought it took time.

On September 30th 2006 Martin and I got married. It was such an amazing day!! Everything was perfect. Our family and friends blessed us with a day that we will never forget. I felt on top of the world, as all my dreams were coming true. I was married!! My illness did not stop me from being the person that I wanted to be, and the person that I was meant to be. It was a magical feeling. I knew, I just knew that a baby would follow. I did however have fleeting thoughts about how it was going to happen.

2006 came to a close, and we were no further in understanding what was going on with our fertility. During that time, in fact most of 2007 Martin and I were very busy with our businesses and moving into a house that we were going to flip, and somehow everything was put on hold. I quickly realized during the summer of 2007 that I was not always ovulating, and that my periods were not as regular as I thought they were. I was also getting more and more chest infections, meaning that I was on IV antibiotics what seemed like all the time. The summer of 2007 was terrible for me. My lung function dropped into the high 30s and I was losing weight, feeling tired, and generally directed my focus to the reason why I was feeling so terrible. The last thing we thought about during that time was having or making a baby. It was a terrible time for us. I thought I had missed my window to carry a baby, since the year before I had felt so much better than I was feeling now. I was sad about it. I was feeling guilty that I had taken away that possibility from my husband, and most of all I was terrified that I would never experience being a mother, which was something I really thought one day would come.

In October 2007 Martin and I moved into the house that we are in now. We got it for many reasons. I loved it due to the neighbourhood, the schools, the kitchen!! I look back at it now, and I think Martin got it so that that I would not feel like I had missed anything. He wanted me to live in a home that was made for a family. A home that had seen it's fair share of children, family dinners, and it's fair share of growing up. It was more than we needed, being just the two of us living in it, but it was my husbands way to make me feel that we still had hope in our future. He wanted me to have this house, since my future was uncertain, and the feeling was now or never. Not later, but now! Later is sometimes hard to imagine when living with CF. Martin, I find out every day is a really good man.

What happened next only makes sense now, it certainly did not make sense at the time when it happened. One night in early 2008 I started to cough up blood. At first I thought it was just some rattling phlegm, nothing a nebulized mask or a puffer would not cure. It was the middle of the night (when all awful things seem to happen) and Marty was already in bed. I left the room and went across the hall to the bathroom (did not want to use the ensuite as it would wake Marty up) to see what was going on. Now for those that don't know, when one has CF, one has to get used to coughing up some nasty stuff. What can I say, it's something that you just get used to!! It's a way of telling a lot about the progression of the illness. The colour, the thickness....well I don't want to gross you out, but it will help with the rest of your understanding. So 2am, I step into the bathroom and proceed to cough up what could have easily been 2 cups of fresh hot blood.

No amount of years with CF prepares you for that moment. How can it? This had never happened to me before. It was out of a horror movie. The truth is, looking back, at that moment I thought I was going to die. I stood there for a while I think. Scared, not wanting to move. I knew what was ahead. The ER at St.Mikes. Waiting hours, may be days for a bed. Then the CF ward (6 Bond) for weeks, may be months. I cried. But then, as so many times before, I got out of the bathroom, woke up my sleeping husband, and the two of us, on automatic pilot packed a bag and were off to St.Mikes.

The blood kept coming for the next week or so, cups and cups of it. I was in ICU until the infection was under control and I was then sent to 6 Bond to continue treatment. I was told it was a blood vessel that burst with the strain of my lung infection. It happened to people with CF. Overall once it was under control and the infection had subsided, the bleeding would stop. As it did.

It was when Martin and I got home that we made the decision that I was in no shape at all to carry a baby. Now I know many of you out there right now are shaking your heads, going, REALLY??? Duh!! But sometimes in life it takes something this big to show you the obvious. Somewhere between 2006 and 2008 I had become very sick. I was no longer able to pretend otherwise.

To this day I thank God for that moment of blood gushing from my lungs, in the bathroom, in the middle of the night. I guess it was obvious that we were not seeing what we were supposed to see, and had to be shown. Basically, God had to reach down and over and over whack me over the head with his big furry slipper. Miraculously it was the best thing that ever happened to us. Within the next 7 months we would meet Joanne a woman that helped us get the surrogacy journey started, we would find our superhero of a surrogate Beth, and most importantly we would get back what we were missing the most, HOPE.