Our journey to this point has been filled with a variety of emotions. This all started in late 2016. Meagan and I had been trying to get pregnant for several months and Meagan felt that something wasn’t right. After consulting with our OB/GYN, we decided to start meeting with an infertility specialist.

After a year and a half, some testing and a failed infertility treatment, Meagan and I decided to proceed with in vitro fertilization. During this process, as the husband, you watch your wife get labs and ultrasounds done frequently, you give her multiple injections at home everyday in the hopes that it will be successful. You pull all of your savings and retirement in hopes to bring a healthy child into this world.

After our retrieval, we ended up with 3 beautiful embryos. We were so happy. We could see all of our children in a picture from the view of a microscope. The following month we had a successful transfer and were overjoyed that we were going to start our family.

Pregnancy was not easy for Meagan. She endured hyperemesis gravidarum, where she vomited approximately 15 times per day for 4 months. As those symptoms improved, but didn’t completely resolve, we found out we were going to have a baby girl, our Tenley Grae.

We enjoyed the following months planning for her arrival. During this time Tenley continued to grow into a healthy baby girl. The Sunday of Tenley’s 36th week I finished painting her nursery. It was perfect. Meagan was a little concerned because she wasn’t moving much, however we were told that as she continued to grow that her movements would not be as noticeable. We went to bed Sunday night. Monday at 4 am, Meagan woke up to some signs of early labor. We made our way to the hospital with excitement to be welcoming our baby girl into our family.

When we arrived to the hospital, after multiple tests we were told that she didn’t have a heartbeat. Our world stopped. Our little girl would not be returning home with us. In the following hours we cried, we were in disbelief, we were in shock. After multiple hours, Tenley was born.

She was a beautiful, healthy baby girl with no heartbeat. She had a hyper coiled umbilical cord that caused her to lose blood supply. The following hours and days were spent getting to spend time as a family with our little girl. Due to some amazing nurses, they reached out to Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep who came to the hospital and captured photos of our Tenley. They were also able to do some family photos.

Thanks to this amazing organization, we will have beautiful memories of our daughter and those precious moments we had with her. I am forever grateful to the nurses and our photographer, Megan Toohey, for the selflessness they had to ensure we would have pictures of our daughter that will last a lifetime. Thank you.

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