NBC4's Melissa Mollet is proud mom to a son, and after years of infertility, a daughter, who joined their family through adoption. Less than a year later, Melissa announced some surprising news: She and her husband, Jake, are expecting another baby!
In her own words, here's her story of loss, hope and their new little miracle who's on the way.
My close friends know my whole story. But many of you -- who have been so lovely and supportive -- do not. We have a son and then had many failed attempts at having a second child. Then we adopted our daughter... and bam! I got pregnant.
This is hard to share. But I realize now this is a story of fate, of how things were supposed to be, and a story that I thought might give hope to someone else.
I never thought we'd be doing this story after adopting our daughter, Barrett Mae, in 2016. When her birth mother picked us, it felt like finding out I was pregnant.
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But for years before Barrett, there was a lot of heartache and sadness. After we had our son, we thought, 'Oh, it'll be easy,' like a lot of people, and I had absolutely no concept of what was ahead for us.
After a year of trying for a second child, we went to see a fertility specialist.
Our diagnosis was fairly common: "unexplained infertility." There was no specific reason I wasn't getting pregnant on my own.
For three years, we tried and tried. Blood draws... Procedures... Medications… Shots… My doctors were fabulous, but it was so hard emotionally, because I'd be so hopeful, then sad and would want to be hopeful again.
I remember being in the bathroom at work, trying to work up courage to give my self shot in the stomach and thinking, "C'mon, you can do this," but it was just really, really hard. We tried lots of things that didn’t work.
Then there were the losses. Remembering the heartache, my husband, Jake, recalls, "I think we did IVF five times and Melissa got pregnant four times."
We'd see a heartbeat... and then a couple of weeks later, there would be some sign that something wasn't right.
"We'd take turns crying and [one] would pick the other one up," Jake remembers.
You can do testing after a miscarriage, so we know some of them had chromosomal abnormalities. I wouldn't wish it on anyone -- each loss was heart-shattering.
But I felt like something -- someone -- was missing from our family, so it was hard for me to stop trying but we needed to. I don't regret any of it, though. It led us to adoption... and now, we swear that Barrett Mae is our angel who's bringing us another baby!
There's also no real explanation for this pregnancy… but I really don't care! I don't need one!
I think about the five we lost all the time. And I think that's probably pretty normal. For anyone trying, we know what it's like. My message to you is don't give up; keep the hope in your heart.
Because now I believe in miracles.
