After almost 7 years of trying to have a baby our dreams finally came true on Friday April 13, 2007, with the help of an awesome doctor. I remember the day perfectly when I found out we were pregnant. I had called in off work, I had poison ivy all over me and I wanted to get a shot. Since we had been trying to conceive they drew my blood and sent me home. A few hours later the call came in and I was pregnant. Now I don't know how they rate your hormone level, but she said mine was extremely high. I was sure there were more than baby in there.

A few weeks later, I couldn't have been more than 3 weeks along (and already showing) we went in for my ultrasound. My husband had to work so my grandma went with me. Now we had artificial insemination and the doctor told me that twins were a probability but he's never had anything more than that with that type of procedure. So as I'm laying on the table he tells me he sees twins. I was soooo happy. And then he says wait a minute (now at this point I'm starting to panic) then he tells me there were two more. QUADS!!! The first thing through my mind was 4 of everything........How our lives were about to change and how badly I did NOT want to tell my husband. When the doctor gave me some time to compose myself and came back in, he said that I still had options. As he started to explain to me what selective reduction was I knew in my mind that at that moment I was having 4 babies and there were no other options for me! Let me just say I'm a very talkative person but that 2 hour car ride home I didn't say one word. I had already started to figure out what we as a family were going to do.

I had to go every week for an ultrasound, they had taken me off of work the day of my first ultrasound. My doctor did tell us that there was a chance that my body could reject some if not all the babies at some point, but that normally if they were there past 10-11 weeks they were probably going to stay. I can remember my 15wk ultrasound. I had taken my grandma and my 13 year old son with me (it would be his first time hearing the heart beat) Tyler was so excited, so when they put the jelly on my tummy and started making rounds...baby a, baby b, baby c and then he stopped and put his hand on my arm. I freaked out I thought he was going to tell me he had found another one!!! But instead he told me that he couldn't find the heart beat of one of the babies. As scared as I was to have quads the loss of one of them was unbearable. Tyler was crushed he thought he was bad luck. And then I had another 2 hour car ride home to tell my husband (Doug) who had no children of his own. When I told him he was absolutely crushed.

The following week at my ultrasound the doctor told me that one of the other babies didn't have much fluid around him, at that point he couldn't tell me why. Every week from that point on was terrifying, not knowing if my baby was going to be there or not. Every week the doc kept saying probably next week he's not going to be there and every week he was!!!!

At 24 weeks I had decided to go to the hospital for bed rest. My friends were having a baby shower for me so I had planned on going to that and the following Monday to the hospital. My friend Cathy called on Monday September 3rd and asked if I wanted to go and eat with her and another friend (Betty) then they would stop by the dollar store and pick up decorations for Saturday's shower. As I'm walking through the dollar store I once again realize I have to pee AGAIN! (pretty common having 3 babies pushing on your bladder). As I start to sit down I realize SOMETHING is hanging out. I yelled for Cathy and she confirmed my worst fear! It was the umbilical cord. I was terrified!! On the way to the hospital I had to make a call to Doug who was 30 minutes away.

When I got to the hospital and they realized what was going on they started the process of preparing me for an emergency c-section....I was hysterical. I kept begging them to fly me to St. Louis (much bigger hospital) but they said if they didn't take all 3 babies now that none of them would live.