These two crazy kids fell in love in the traditional Millennial way… through Tinder.

We swiped right and matched in late February and had our first date on Leap Day 2016.

It was a whirlwind year of non-stop work trips for both of us. One of us would be gone for two weeks, come home for a date night or two, then the other one would jet off for a month. So naturally, after spending less than a combined 90 days in person together over an 8-month time period,
we did what every great Navy couple does - elope!

 Like most modern couples, we knew we wanted to wait a few years before starting to grow our family.

Despite Charlie’s grueling work schedule, we decided 2019 was our year. Little did we know that Lauren was suffering from multiple reproductive health issues. Coming off birth control unleashed the suppressed beasts.

She has spent most of the last five years in excruciating pain 2-3 weeks of each month. She has been constantly in and out of doctors offices, the ER, and had multiple surgeries to mitigate her chronic illnesses.

In 2021, Lauren found out she was finally pregnant. At that point, it had been a long two years of waiting and negative tests - but our miracle finally arrived.

Four weeks of intense nausea never felt so hopeful.

All the announcement gifts had been purchased. We were days away from telling our families. We wanted to have some images included in their announcement gifts, so we scheduled a private pay ultrasound to see our baby for the first time ever.

(Our military clinic doesn’t schedule pregnant people for first appointments until they are at least 12 weeks. Don’t even get us started on that horrible policy.)

With the first flicker of the ultrasound on the screen - something was wrong.

Being a private imaging clinic, they are non-diagnostic. They could not tell us anything and quickly ended our appointment. They could not give us any advice or guidance on next steps. Lauren read through the lines and we decided to go to the emergency room.

“Well, it’s both good and bad news. Ultimately, it won’t end well.”

Twins.

Monochorionic Diamniotic Twins. Identical, one placenta, two separate sacs.

They had both stopped growing over 2 weeks ago. We were in the midst of a missed miscarriage. Lauren’s body had not recognized that the fetuses had stopped growing and was continuing to rapidly produce HCG.

The doctors gave us a list of our options. Ultimately, Lauren chose a D&C. She did not want to have the responsibility or experience of having to pass them at home. Her mental health was already deteriorated from the years of infertility - avoiding adding any additional unnecessary trauma was our goal.

72 hours later, we were no longer pregnant.

Back to square one.

What we were told initially is not where we are now.

At the start, we were labeled as having “Unexplained Infertility”.

Charlie’s labs were perfect. Lauren’s labs were close to great. Anything that was slightly off was being actively treated by medication and back into proper range.

Due to being told that there shouldn’t be any issues conceiving, we pursued three rounds of IUI in early 2022, but unfortunately none were successful.

January 2023 we experienced a “Chemical Pregnancy”. We had faint positives for about a week before Lauren miscarried again; this time at 5 weeks.

This brings us to today.