One on Earth & Three in the Stars

A Father’s Day Reflection on Love, Loss, and Unimaginable Strength

This throwback photo screams a thousand things.

It’s a crystal clear reminder that we, you and I, are parents to one living child and three dead ones. That in itself is impossibly complicated and emotional, and has deeply and continually changed and shaped our journey to building a family and to supporting one another, standing in the middle of an unpredictable sea, trying to tread water with our mouths closed and our eyes wide open.

I remember the feeling of standing in this hallway just minutes after our fifth IVF embryo transfer. Well, just minutes after all of our embryo transfers.

This photo was taken four years ago last week.

And oh.em.gee.

Literally nothing is as it was then.

Our whole world changed with this embryo transfer.

This pregnancy.

This loss.

It’s clear now that every single thought, feeling, decision and emotion since this has been colored by our devastating experience.

When intimacy, privacy and connection are removed from trying to conceive, there’s such little time or ability to be present in the moment. - in the hope, and in the fear, just 1:1 with your partner. In the season this photo was captured, after navigating two previous losses back to back during our living daughter’s second year of life, we knew we had work to do both indicate and together to come back home to one another.

By then, we’d already faced unexplained infertility, failed fertility treatments, fierce disappointment, raging frustration, and astonishing grief on our journey to parenthood. But we were also lucky enough to have experienced a season of hope and miracles and life changing emotions that came with successfully carrying a baby to term and bringing that little girl into this world.

When this photo was taken four years ago, we were completely unaware of how naive we still were.

We’d just transferred the twins back into my body, and we were so hopeful that they would be our rainbow babies, our redemption story. That we’d give our daughter both a brother and a sister, we’d discard all our remaining IVF supplies, and our family would be complete.

Four years ago today I took my first pregnancy test after that round of IVF, six days after this photo was taken, six days after the twins embryo transfer.

When it was positive, I cried out with relief and hope and fear and angst.

For all intents and purposes, the veil hadn’t yet been lifted, and I still believed that two parallel pink lines meant bringing home a tiny newborn baby - or hopefully in this case - two brand new infants.

When I delivered those twins at just 12 weeks gestation, they were far too tiny to survive outside of my body, and the foundation of our life and our marriage was deeply shaken with the impact of that completely unforeseen and unfathomable tragedy.

In the last four years, we’ve talked a million times in a hundred places including a zillion versions of what might come next, about what our ideal plan could or would look like in order to give our daughter a living sibling and to complete our family.

We even proceeded to go through two more rounds of IVF egg retrievals while watching my mental and then physical health decline rapidly. At the same time, we tried to remain present in some capacity as our living daughter continued to learn and grow and evolve and thrive,

We thought for a minute we were figuring things out, and then last spring I spontaneously got pregnant - something we were told could never happen. But that pregnancy implanted two inches shy of my uterus, eventually rupturing the fallopian tube where our baby was growing, and nearly taking my life in the process.

We grieved together, we fought to stay alive together, we navigated pain that nobody should have to endure together, and then we decided, together, that the medically necessary hysterectomy being recommended for my safety was advice we’d follow, even though it likely meant never giving our living daughter a living sibling, and never transferring back or utilizing the six frozen embryos that we will continue to pay to store for the rest of time.

We’ve also parented our living daughter together through multiple changes, challenges and phases of her little life, we’ve aligned in what we want her childhood to look and feel like, we’ve survived every interim unrelated or compounding trauma thrown our way, we navigated challenges that made us question ourselves and each other, and we actually asked ourselves on more than one occasion if we both believed our marriage was strong enough to reach the other side.

Today, on Father’s Day, I recognize that I am often the mouthpiece for sharing our story and articulating meaning out of our experiences - but that they have each deeply affected us both.

I hope you know I admire the shit out of your bond with our living daughter - your commitment and joy and patience and consistency with her is unbelievably beautiful and inspiring and reinforces what I already knew - you’d be the best dad in the world.

I also think about the three kiddos that should be adding to the noise and the juggling of our daily parenting life, and I grieve for and with you as a loss parent who desperately wanted a big family. I grieve in thinking about how much society has expected you to soldier on - through grieving the impossible, while working overtime hours, parenting the living, managing a house, and fully supporting your wife through multiple surgeries, episodes of illness, flaring of symptoms, and crippling depression.

Honestly, you deserve a medal.

Or a day off.

I can’t exactly give you those things the way I’d like to.

But instead, I’ll say this:

I see you.

I admire you.

I cannot imagine surviving this story we’re living without you, or with anyone else by my side.

You are a phenomenal father.

A role model.

Our daughter’s hero.

My hero.

And I know that the babies are constantly looking down, thinking how much they wish they could play with you, be snuggled by you, and tell you how much they too love you.

For now, here on earth, it’ll just be you and me and B, us three. But forever we’ll be tied by those that we had to say hello & goodbye to in the same breath - the three that we will forever be the deepest, hardest, most gut wrenching what ifs.

So today, as the world celebrates fathers with hand-drawn cards and backyard barbecues, I hold both the celebration and the sorrow for and with you. I hold space for the tenderness and for the ache, for what’s here and for what’s missing.

I watch our daughter trace her fingers along your beard, laugh at your silly jokes, lean into your arms like it’s the safest place in the world, and I know that it is. I know that what she has is rare and extraordinary and steady. And I know, too, that you carry the love for all of our children - born, lost, imagined, and dreamed - every single day, without ever needing to say a word.

This photo, this memory, this story - it’s not just ours, but a reflection of every parent trying to stay afloat in waters they never asked to navigate.

So on this Father’s Day, I want the world to see what I see: a man who kept loving even when it hurt, who stood beside me every time our world fell apart, and who continues to show up - fully, bravely, and relentlessly - for the family we built together, one heartbeat at a time.

You are the kind of dad every child deserves.

And the kind of partner I will forever be grateful to call mine.

Thank you, for staying.

For listening and holding and asking and loving.

Thank you for making my world, our world, a place filled with love, compassion, and permission to be honest.

I can’t imagine surviving all that we have in any other way.

I love you.