We don’t always get what we want. So when 31-year-old Kelsi Pierce and her husband decided they were finally ready to start a family they didn’t anticipate having so many difficulties trying to get pregnant.
The couple from Minnesota dealt with a three year struggle to get pregnant, but try as they might, it just wasn’t happening. They even spent all of their savings on everything from surgeries to IVF, where it was discovered that Kelsi had a low ovarian reserve.
As Kelsi went through a successful round of IVF, the bad news continued when she was then told that the lining of her uterus was too thin to carry a pregnancy.
Kelsi tried for two years to thicken her lining, but all her efforts appeared to be in vain.
“He (the doctor) told me that nothing was working and my body just wasn’t able to [carry a pregnancy],” Kelsi told Good Morning America. “It was a very emotional conversation, of course, but I understood that we’d tried everything possible.”
This left limited options left, including adoption, or the use of a gestational carrier who could carry one of the couple’s embryos for them.
Kelsi and Kyle desperately wanted to choose the second option, but a procedure like this typically costs more than $100,000, and they had already spent thousands on IVF.
“We had already poured more than our savings and gone into debt incredibly just for what we had done before, so it wasn’t an option,” said Kelsi. “It was a very depressing time.”
But while the couple were nursing broken hearts and shattered dreams, there was one person out there who was on a mission to give them exactly what they wanted: Kelsi’s mom.
Rutherford immediately visited her doctor, where she began the process of being medically cleared to serve as a gestational carrier. At 53-years-old, many would assume that she wasn’t fit to carry a child- but unbelievably, she was approved for a transfer at the beginning of this year.
The selfless mom underwent her embryo transfer on Feb. 7, and was almost instantly confirmed pregnant, on Feb. 15.
Meanwhile, Kelsi, who said she had never honestly considered that her mom could carry her baby, was surprised in the best way when she found out the news.
“I woke up and there was a text on my phone and it was a picture of a positive pregnancy test and I just lost it,” she said.
After the news of her mom’s pregnancy, Kelsi finally stopped seeing fertility doctors and taking fertility medications.
That’s when the unthinkable happened.
“I used to take pregnancy tests every month and it was just one of those things where, by habit, I took a pregnancy test,” she said of that day in March. “I glanced down at the test and I was going to throw it away like normal, and that was the first time I saw two lines.”
Unable to believe her eyes, Kelsi took a second test, which read positive again, before having her pregnancy confirmed by a doctor.
Taking in the happy news after so many years of bad news was a lot to process for Kelsi, who “was crying for a month straight.” Only two months had passed by, but Kelsi and Kyle had gone from having limited options left, to anticipating two children of their very own.
As their baby bumps grew, Kelsi and her mom embraced their pregnancies together, with Rutherford saying, “This pregnancy was awesome. It went off really well.”
The pair shared pregnancy tips and tricks, facetimed each other at doctors appointments, and discussed pregnancy cravings.
At Rutherford’s 36th week appointment, doctors discovered that she had preeclampsia and needed to deliver the baby within 12 hours via C-section. But although baby Everly had some complications during birth, she went on to be a perfect, happy, healthy baby.
Seven weeks and three days later, Kelsi gave birth to big sister Ava. She’s now basking in the glow of being a first time mom, and although it can be hard, all she has to do is remember where she was this time two years ago, and how her dream to be a mom has finally come true in the best way possible.
And for any moms who are desperately trying to conceive right now, Kelsi has a message:
“Even if you have to go a super unconventional route, if being a mom is important to you, there are a lot of ways to do this,” she said.
We are so happy Kelsi and her husband were finally able to start a family. All thanks to her loving mom and her body finally giving her what she’d wanted for so long.