Our Journey to Parenthood

Our wonderful friends gave us tips and advice on preconception planning for having a baby. We changed our diets, took health supplements, and read up on everything we could to help us on our journey. More importantly, we also both took the necessary blood tests to assess our fertility and reproductive health.

In this process, Jonathan found out that he is a genetic carrier for Tay Sachs disease and another genetic condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. These two unrelated genetic abnormalities do not affect Jonathan’s health (he’s just a carrier), however, it could be fatal for our child if Sheila were also a carrier for either genetic disease. Thankfully, Sheila was tested and has no known genetic carrier disease for any of the 400+ genetic diseases that can be passed down.

Sheila saw a specialist to have a water sonogram performed that allowed us to visualize the health of her reproductive organs. Thankfully everything checked out okay. We were able to see all of her eggs (unfertilized) within her ovaries for a brief moment in time, the same month that our little one was conceived. One of these eggs would become our child! This was our first glimpse of our little one before conception!