Jenica Suppes and her husband were looking forward to starting a family. But they ran into some trouble when they found out that she had endometriosis and her husband’s sperm swims backward.
Jenica began taking fertility treatments but the Ohio couple felt like that might not be the answer.
“While going through those 4 treatments we felt like the Lord was leading us to consider adoption,” Jenica wrote in a piece for Love What Matters. “We were matched fairly quickly with a mom out in California who was pregnant with twin girls. Since it was twins, we decided to take a break with fertility treatments and just focus on these sweet girls.”
The girls’ birth mother eventually had second thoughts. That mother ended up choosing two separate families for each of their girls. Jenica and her husband were completely devastated.
But they didn’t give up.
They took a month off but ended up adopting a 6-month-old boy in Louisiana. Their son is now 2.5-years-old. But a few months after they adopted their son, they were looking to have their own child again.
“We decided to switch to Dr. Mooney at Reproductive Gynecology because he had great referrals along with all the doctors there. We did 4 rounds of IUI with Gonal-f injections, and on our last round before we were considering IVF, we found out that we were pregnant with Quints!” Jenica wrote.
“My husband almost fainted and I just kept laughing. We were having 3 boys and identical twin girls. The pregnancy was very hard with decisions such as ‘selective abortion,’ to which doctors to use and which hospital to deliver at, and how to handle being on bed rest or in the hospital for weeks on end, all the while still being the best mother I could be to my 2-year-old.”
Unfortunately, Jenica learned that she had lost her twin girls. And it was heartbreaking all over again.
They were just as devastated as when they lost their first set of twin girls.
” I felt like God teased me again and was taking away everything we had dreamed of one by one,” Jenica said. “I kept thinking the boys weren’t going make it either and it would be my fault. I had thoughts that I should have been more careful about what I did and how much I was on my feet.”
She was scared that she would lose her boys too. Jenica was eventually put in the hospital.
Eventually, gave birth to all five children.
Unfortunately, only the boys were alive. The boys did have some health problems and it was scary for the family.
“Since then, we have had a TON of specialty doctor’s appointments for all the boys, including my crazy 2-year-old, but they are gradually getting better and better and growing out of some of the preemie issues they had,” Jenica wrote.
“Our 8-month-old little boys have grown so much they are about to pass their older brother in weight, and sure do love their cereal, big brother (most the time) and their bouncers and walkers.”
Sometimes Jenica struggles with blaming herself for the loss of her girls.
“I try to remind myself that the boys are healthier because of it and they made it to 28 weeks and grew like champs and came out as healthy as any preemie baby would at that gestation. They thrived at the sacrifice of our identical baby girls,” shew rote. “In the end, I wouldn’t trade a thing about our journey because it is what makes our family unique.”
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