Horne Surrogacy Journey

Our story:

We learned we were expecting our first child during the summer of 2020. We were so excited to start this new chapter of our lives. In September we learned we were having a boy that we would name Maddox Richard Horne. We began preparing for Maddox’s arrival and our excitement continued to grow as my pregnancy was moving right along.

Unfortunately, during the early hours of Christmas morning our lives were changed forever. I woke up to heavy bleeding in which we (thankfully Tyler was off from the fire station and at home) immediately rushed to the hospital. As we arrived to the hospital the nurses and doctor began searching for a heartbeat, and we heard the worst news that there was no longer a heartbeat. As you can imagine we were devastated. We learned that I suffered from a placenta abruption. Eventually it was decided that I would need a C-section. Due to the amount of blood loss and damage to my uterus I had to have a partial hysterectomy during surgery. This meant I would no longer be able to become pregnant.

After surgery I was taken to ICU and was sedated for a couple of days to try to give my body time to heal. During this time we learned that my liver and kidneys were not working properly and beginning to fail. Luckily my liver quickly recovered, but my kidneys continued to struggle along with high blood pressure and my blood levels still trying to normalize. I was placed on dialysis and classified as acute kidney failure in which the doctors seemed hopeful I would recover and there was no permanent scarring on my kidneys since that would mean I would need a kidney transplant (this is when I really started wondering when/if this nightmare would ever end).

After a long 13 day hospital stay I was finally released, but would have to continue outpatient dialysis. We had Maddox’s funeral January 10th which was extremely hard as I never planned on planning my child’s funeral instead I thought I would be helping plan my baby shower. Thankfully we were surrounded by our supportive family and friends during this time, and our jobs were so understanding of our situation and supportive.

January was filled with follow up doctor appointments and dialysis 3 days a week. We received the best news we heard in a long time the day after my birthday (January 29th) that my creatinine level was finally in a normal range which meant I no longer had to do dialysis since my kidneys were working properly again. I had some follow up appointments for lab work to make sure my levels were staying in the normal ranges which they have thankfully.

Through all of this I believe our marriage has strengthened in a way I could not have imagined, and we still have a desire to have more children. Since I had to have a hysterectomy our way of achieving this looks very different now. We have been blessed with a wonderful family member that volunteered to be our surrogate. This is such a selfless act that we are incredibly grateful for. We can’t thank her enough! The surrogacy process is an expensive process that we never thought we would have to be doing though. We will use any donations for the IVF process including my egg retrieval, medicine for myself and our surrogate, embryo transfer, and legal fees.

Please know that your contribution to help us expand our family is one of the greatest gifts that we will be forever grateful for. Whether your contribution is financial (no dollar amount is too small), sharing our GoFundMe page, and/or praying for us through this journey we are extremely thankful. All prayers and generosity are tremendously appreciated. We will continue to update everyone on our journey!