Oralia and Evander are our day 6 red and orange Rainbow Baby’s for our National Rainbow Baby Day project!

This is the story of Oralia & Evander!

Their Mothers’ words –

The faith filled long journey of getting us our rainbow babies have helped shape us into the people we are today….for that we are thankful! It was a road full of heart breaks and tears along the way!!!
12 years…..this is the amount of time it took to get both of our rainbow babies!!!

July 2011….The excitement and joy I felt seeing “pregnant 3+” after trying for only 6 months was indescribable!!! I couldn’t believe it ….made my husband go out and buy more tests! We were so excited that we started telling people right away! We took announcement photos at 6 weeks to post on social media for when we hit 10 weeks….but things changed quickly! At week 7 I started having dizziness, bleeding, and cramping but the doctors office kept telling me that if I wasn’t soaking a pad an hour that it’s normal. (They won’t see you in office until week 8-10 for the first appointment). One day at work I came through a doorway and I passed out. A doctor at work asked if there was anyway that I could be pregnant and I said yes…he said you need to go to the hospital. Once at the hospital they ran labs and did a pelvic exam to make sure I was pregnant and then they sent me for our first ultrasound. I was so scared and they performed the scan in silence! Once they completed it they returned me to my room in the ER. The doctor came in with the news that shattered my heart! We had an ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy that takes place in the Fallopian tube instead of the uterus) and when I passed out at work they believe that my body ejected it out of the tube which caused that baby to be “free floating “ in the uterus. This is not a viable pregnancy and the recommended treatment is to do 2 injections of a medicine called methotrexate. Due to the nature of this medication after receiving it we were told to not try to get pregnant for 3 months. Little did we know it would be a lot longer than that before we would see a positive pregnancy test again! After multiple rounds of clomid, femara, and IUIs………..January 2017 we got a blazing positive test FINALLY with no medicine or procedures ! Fast forward to our first doctors appointment, it was a Friday ! On Fridays this particular office doesn’t have an ultrasound tech on site so the doctor did the scan. During the abdominal ultrasound he stated “either you’re not pregnant or you’re not as far along as you think”. I said “we have been trying for 6 years I know exactly how far along I am!” 10 weeks exactly! He informed us that the ultrasound tech would be in on Monday and to return then so she could do a transvaginal scan. Monday we return hoping that she would be able to give us better news! This time she did the transvaginal ultrasound. As soon as she inserted and looked at the uterus it was empty…my heart started racing. She went to the right Fallopian tube and there it was …..a normal, moving, healthy baby. I immediately started bawling and turned my head to look away because I knew it was in the wrong place which meant that we were going to lose this baby too. As I am crying looking at my husband, also crying watching the screen, the tech had to complete her exam and that meant listening to the baby’s heartbeat. She played this out loud….something that still makes me cry thinking about! Pure torture! I started having an insane amount of lower abdominal pain/pressure. The tech went to get the doctor…he came in to inform us to get over to the hospital immediately for surgery because my tube had ruptured during the ultrasound and my pelvis was starting to fill with blood. By the time we reached the hospital less than 5 minutes away I couldn’t even stand up straight from the amount of pain from the internal bleeding. Healing from surgery and losing a baby was an extremely difficult time for me mentally and physically. I knew in my gut that we had to go different avenues than previously tried to get our baby….we needed IVF! I started researching and found a place in New York that was affordable…thought no way this is a real place! Had a friend that went to this clinic and were pregnant with their twins! Knew this was our sign …this was the place!!!!
October 2017 our families came together and helped us throw a benefit to help covers some of the costs! Blessed with all the support!  November 2017 we had our first egg retrieval and had our transfer of our only 2 embryos in December 2017! In January we found out that both embryos took and we were expecting twins!
10 weeks pregnant we were having our routine ultrasound to find out that baby A stopped growing at week 9. The doctors filled us with fear, yet again, that we could potentially lose baby B as well. Said I could pass baby A…if that happened then the other baby would miscarry as well or my body would reabsorb the baby. We prayed for the second of the two to happen…and that’s what happened!
Oralia Krysalis Faith Hammack….our precious golden jewel protected by a golden sheath….Faith had to be part of her name because we had to have faith that we would be parents through IVF, I wouldn’t lose the pregnancy, I would carry to term, and I would get the home birth that I so badly dreamt of!
I’ll NEVER forget the feeling of finally holding my own baby for the first time!

Started trying for baby #2 when Oralia was 6 months old…not knowing how long it would take again! October 2022 we started the IVF process again. Our first retrieval for baby #2 that gave us 5 embryos. Negative transfer October with 2 embryos, negative transfer November with 2 embryos, and a positive test with our December transfer of our last and  worst graded embryo! This excitement was short lived. Before the end of December that positive test was now fading and bloodwork was showing a chemical pregnancy was taking place. (A pregnancy loss that takes place before the first ultrasound to detect a heartbeat). Defeated …we had no remaining embryos and I was feeling tons of side effects from the amount  of meds I was on for 3 months straight I had to give myself a break to try to get my health back in line. July 2023 we decided to do another retrieval. This time, although older, I had the best outcome with retrieval numbers! We had 12 embryos make it to day 5!!!! We decided to go against the recommendation of the doctors and do a fresh transfer! We transferred 2 of our best graded embryos!
Again we were pregnant with twins !!!! We made it to week 7 with baby B. Baby B never developed a heartbeat and stopped growing. Again we were praying like crazy for Baby A to make it this time!
Evander Victor Hysent Hammack……our little strong prince that was sent from high above!