Pregnancy After Breast Cancer

Two years ago, God made a way.

Two years ago, in September 2023, we saw two pink lines that changed everything.

After chemo.

After radiation.

After surgeries.

After oral chemo.

After countless tears, sleepless nights, and prayers whispered through both hope and fear…

We found out we were pregnant with our miracle baby.

But I'm getting ahead of myself - let's take it back to the beginning, of this story at least.

Your Body Is A Battlefield

When you walk through cancer, your body becomes a battlefield. Treatments are designed to save you, but they also strip away so much - your energy, your confidence, sometimes your hope. And for me, the question that hung in my heart as soon as I heard "it's cancer" and long after the last treatment ended was: Would my body ever be able to carry new life again?

Our daughter was 16 months old when I was diagnosed, and at the time, we were just starting to entertain the idea of adding to our family in the summer of 2021. My husband and I consider ourselves blessed to both come from large families, with multiple siblings on either side. Childhood to us meant spending time with our siblings swimming under the summer skies, jumping into piles of dried leaves in the fall, and wonderfully chaotic Christmases having to wait our turn as we opened gifts in sequential order around the crowded living room. It was all family, all the time and we had been dreaming of that kind of wild and full life for our little family. Brothers and sisters are many things - your first tormenters, your fierce protectors, but most importantly we believe they're our built-in best friends, and we wanted that for our daughter more than anything.

With that dream in mind, we made the difficult decision at the beginning of my diagnosis to delay treatment slightly in the pursuit of emergency IVF. But even with that Plan B on ice (literally), the hope to grow our family still felt impossible at times. After completing treatment, I began having conversations with my doctors about the possibility of pregnancy after cancer. We discussed the risks and I knew the beating my body had already taken, but my oncologist was always positive and encouraging. He would reference research studies that said women who conceived after cancer showed a reduced risk of recurrence - full disclosure, I could never find those studies when I'd search for them on my own, but I trusted his judgement. He expressed that I should wait 1-year after completing all forms of active treatment before trying to conceive - so with that timeline in mind, we patiently waited as my body and mind set to work healing what had been broken and preparing for what might be.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't afraid that pregnancy might actually mean the cancer would come back. It was impossible to not draw the correlation between how soon after my 1st child was born and when the cancer was found in my body. I first felt the lump in my right breast when she was only 15 months old. I don't know what caused my cancer and I never will, but logical or not - that fear existed in my mind and I knew I'd have to actively work to move past that if I was serious about trying to carry another baby.

A Year Goes By So Fast

A year came and went pretty quickly and was filled with so much life! We traveled, we celebrated, we processed, we mourned. I went to therapy. We celebrated our daughter turning 3! I started a new job. We did our best to settle into what our "new normal" looked like "after cancer." That said, I'll make the disclaimer in the interest of keeping it real for you all - there really is no "after cancer." You carry it with you wherever you go. It colors the way you see yourself and the world around you. It's always hard, always exhausting, always difficult. But I'm finding that, as with active treatment, it's a cumulative process. With every year I lug it around in my heart, my body gets a bit stronger, it gets a bit further from the top of my mind. But to my cancer survivor friends and families - just because we carry it well doesn't mean it isn't heavy. Give yourself grace.

Alright - back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So, August 2023 marked 1-year and 1-month since my last day of oral chemo. And in that time, I was lucky enough to see my body's reproductive cycles return and normalize. I had been successfully tracking my cycles and identifying ovulation windows - which I found amazing because prior to my cancer diagnosis and treatment that hadn't been the case. I had irregular periods and it ultimately took 2-years of trying and a round of Clomid to become pregnant with our 1st child. I always tell people - I don't recommend chemotherapy if it can be avoided (just in life in general haha). But in this specific circumstance, it did seem to act as a hard reset switch on my body, so I took it as a silver lining around an otherwise completely horrible experience. With that past experience in mind, our expectations were set pretty low and my husband and I entered into this season of life with hope and optimism in our hearts and the thought of our "Plan B on ice" in the back of our minds.

Even Now...

That September morning when I watched those two pink lines appear, it didn't feel real. I really didn't think I was pregnant. I just wanted to take a test because we were about to travel to visit friends for a week and I figured I should check to be safe. I hadn't even warned my husband that I was taking a test. There was no pomp, no circumstance. And when the 2nd test read "pregnant" across the digital screen (always got to double-check) shock and excitement spread across my body like a wave washing over me. I ran to the top of the stairs and hollered down, "BAAAABE, I need youuuuuu!!!!" He came to the foot of the stairs, taking his sweet time in his oblivion to the situation, and when he looked up at me standing there holding a pregnancy test his face flashed back and forth between a smile and just jaw-on-the-ground disbelief.

I remember hearing God in my heart so clearly saying: "Even now, after everything your body has been through. Even here, in a place of disbelief and doubt. Even after everything telling you this shouldn't be possible, I can and I did. And if it is My Will, I will always make a way."

I stepped into this 2nd pregnancy completely in awe of my God's power - yet painfully aware of how small I had made Him in my mind, reducing his greatness to what felt humanly possible within the logical confines of this world.

Even here. Even now. Even after... God had a different story in mind and He gave us a gift beyond anything we could have imagined.

A Story of Hope

Pregnancy after cancer wasn’t without fear. Every appointment, every new symptom carried the weight of anxiety. I held my breath more often than I’d like to admit, waiting for reassurance that everything was okay.

But alongside the fear was joy. Pure, overwhelming joy. Every tiny milestone - the first ultrasound, the first flutter of movement, the sound of that steady heartbeat - was a reminder of resilience. My body, once so weary from fighting, was now creating life. And my heart, once so heavy with worry, was now overflowing with gratitude.

This journey taught me that strength is not about never feeling weak. Strength is about choosing to keep moving forward, even as fear whispers relentlessly in your ear. I've learned that my body and my faith can hold more than I ever thought possible.

I share this not because our story is perfect, I think you'd all agree that it's not what I would have chosen for myself or my husband to have to walk through. But I really feel like it's a reminder that our God can take what feels broken, what may seem shattered beyond repair, and turn it into something beautiful once more.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Our daughter (yes, our 2nd baby turned out to be another beautiful baby girl) - she is our living reminder that God's redemptive goodness is greater than what our human hearts and minds can possibly comprehend.

As I reflect on that September morning, I’m struck by how far we’ve come. From the lowest lows of chemo treatments to the highest highs of holding our healthy baby girl, pregnancy after breast cancer - the journey has been nothing short of transformative.

Today, I hold a little hand that reminds me daily: miracles are real. Hope is worth holding on to. And no matter how impossible things may seem, God is always making a way.