Pregnancy can be a beautiful, frustrating, and miraculous thing. For people who struggle to conceive, there's a lot of stress and tears shed over bringing a baby home.
Kelsi Pierce knows those hard feelings. She married husband Kyle in 2016. They've been trying to get pregnant since but had no luck. They consulted doctors and learned that Kelsi had an exceptionally low ovarian reserve. They also discovered both her tubes were blocked.
The news was crushing for Kelsi and Kyle, but they didn't give up. Kelsi underwent grueling IVF treatments that created five successful embryos. In the meantime, she used patches, pills, injections, and infusions to try to thicken the lining of her uterus. Sadly, none of those attempts worked.
The couple began considering other options, but they never imagined what would happen next. What they truly never imagined was that their road to a baby would lead to two.
Kelsi and Kyle Pierce desperately wanted to start a family, but they had a hard time getting there.
"I was like, 'I will try anything. You give me something and you tell me it would take five years off the end of my life, I don't care. I want a baby. I would do anything,'" she told People magazine.
"We were just desperate."
A year into Kelsi and Kyle's journey to attempt to get pregnant, Kelsi's mom, Lisa Rutherford, made a suggestion. After reading in People about a mom serving as her daughter's surrogate, she thought it could be a possibility for them.
"She was like, 'Oh my god, I would so do that for you guys,'" Kelsi recalled.
“But where we were at mentally, we were like, 'You'll never have to do that. This will work, my body's going to respond to the meds eventually. You don't need to put your body through that at this age,'" Kelsi continued.
"Not that we didn't take it seriously, but we didn't think it would ever come to that.”
Kelsi and Kyle continued on. Kelsi underwent surgery to clear her tubes, with the couple hoping that would put them in a better situation. The surgery didn't work out that way. Doctors told the couple they'd exhausted options to conceive naturally, which was crushing.
"It was a very dark hole I was in," Kelsi shared.
"And being a teacher, it's hard too, because I'm around kids. I used work as a way to stay busy, but then it's also like, I'm constantly reminded about what I want so badly, which is to have a kid … It was a very depressing time."
Luckily, Lisa still had her offer on the table. So when the couple exhausted all other options, they began the process of getting Lisa medically cleared. She was given the OK to serve as a surrogate.
"After we had talked about it the first time, it was always in the back of my mind," Lisa said.
"So I called a couple of fertility doctors in Michigan and I think three of them said, 'No, you're crazy. We're not going to do that,'" Lisa explained.
"[But] I found this one and she was awesome. She said, 'Yep.'"
In December 2019, Lisa prepared her body for pregnancy for the first time since she carried Kelsi. By February, she was pregnant. But the beautiful story didn't end there, not by a long shot.
Just a month later, Kelsi received some shocking news. She, too, was pregnant. She found out by taking a routine pregnancy test by habit.
"It wasn't anything I thought was even a possibility," she says.
"When I saw the two lines I was completely in awe because I had never seen two lines. I had gone so crazy where I would check them every month and I would try so hard to see lines that weren't there," Kelsi explained.
"So to see it plain in front of my eyes, I was like, 'No, no, this is a faulty test.' I didn't want to get my hopes up, but it was so crazy and exciting."
Lisa was elated by the news. "I said, 'Well, maybe this is god's way of letting them have two children,'" she said.
"Because the odds of her having another one are very, very slim. So I was excited! I was just elated that they could end up having two kids."
The mother and daughter had a blast being pregnant together. "I've always said my mom's my best friend," Kelsi said.
"If something bad is happening or I'm having a bad day, she’s who I reach out to. And if something good has happened or I'm excited about something, she's who I reach out as well. We talk like, five times a day, every day."
The couple found out that both their little ones would be girls. Lisa welcomed Everly several weeks early. The little girl spent five days in the NICU before she got to go home on new mama Kelsi's birthday.
On November 23, Kelsi welcomed Ava.
"It still feels surreal to me," Kelsi said.
"I'm so excited to where they can just notice each other and see what they do. It's just so amazing. I just stare at them for however long and I’m just like, 'I can't believe you're mine.'"
