Emilia - Our little Christmas Miracle 😍

I’m Lucia and I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia when I was 15 in 2005. I had 2 and a half years of chemotherapy treatment. I met my now husband, Joe shortly after I was diagnosed. He had gone to the same high school and had been diagnosed with the same cancer the year before. Our lives went in different directions for a few years but we ended up together in 2012 and were married in 2018. We are very fortunate that we both remain in remission from leukaemia and despite late effects, we both work full time and bought a house together.

We always knew that we wanted a family but were unsure if the treatment had affected our fertility. Joe had banked sperm a few days after he was diagnosed which had been in the freezer ever since. I was unable to freeze my eggs as the technology didn’t exist back in 2005 and even so, there wouldn’t have been the time to undergo the month long process as I had to start treatment urgently.

In 2016 we decided the time was right to have some fertility investigations to see where things were at. We had lots of tests at St Mary’s hospital and were told that things looked positive which was reassuring although I was warned that I was still at risk of early menopause so there was some time pressure. We then got married in 2018 and shortly after decided to try for a baby. This took more planning than usual as I was on a lot of medication that took a while to come off. After several months nothing was happening and we were both worried and had a gut feeling that something was wrong. We went back to St Mary’s in early 2019 and after more tests were told that there were issues with both of us and that they were unsure if this was related to treatment but they were willing to offer us IVF. To say that we were both floored by this news was an understatement. We had expected to have to jump through a lot of hoops to be offered fertility treatment. My gut instinct told me to ask for a delay and we decided to return to start treatment in May 2019. Three days before this appointment we found out that I was five weeks pregnant and we couldn’t believe it! As we were so shocked we decided to keep the pregnancy quiet. We decided to go for an early scan at 8 weeks and then found out that we were having a baby girl at 15 weeks. Our due date was New Year’s Eve 2019 and our little lady Emilia decided to make an early appearance on 19/12/19 after a very quick labour. She is now one year old and she is everything we could have wished for. Emilia has made a difficult year positive and despite not having the maternity leave I expected, we have tried to give her as many experiences as possible. Me and Joe look at her every day and pinch ourselves and are so grateful to be her parents.