To get to Lenna...

Aaron and I met in the Fall of 2005 on eharmony! Our first date was the Rose Bowl after he returned from Christmas with his family. We hit it of immediately, he left for a deployment however the next Tuesday. We exchanged emails until he returned in late February and we picked up where we had left off. By the end of April he had proposed and I was pushing for a long courtship. I had grand plans of a beautiful wedding on the beach in Mexico in the summer of 2007. Heavenly Father however had another plan for us.
I first started getting sick when I was 16 by the spring of 2006 I had already had two surgeries multiple hospitalizations and been to a million doctors with no one able to connect all the dots. I knew something was wrong but we just couldn't get that mystery diagnosis. They always liked to throw out cancer but had never been able to make it stick. In 2006 however I started getting sicker. A whole new set of symptoms appeared and Aaron my new fiance was incredibly worried.I no longer had health insurance and my new symptoms combined with the last set of blood work added up to possibly something very scary.
While down visiting him in San Diego for his birthday Aaron came up with a plan. We would elope! So with no flowers, no family, and in a dress I was planning to wear to his birthday dinner we were married at the San Diego court house. He then was kind enough to feed me (Cheesecake Factory) and took me to Navy Medical Center. You see even though I had only been his wife for about an hour I qualified for medical benefits.
What followed was six months of more doctors and tests but before we could discover what was causing all of my pain and symptoms we were transferred to a little town in Northern California, Eureka.
What followed was some of the toughest years we will probably ever have.
It took another year and a surgery before we had the diagnosis, Stage 5 Endometriosis. Endometriosis is a nasty disease with no real cure. Pregnancy will put it into temporary (and on the rare occasion permanent) remission or you can have your reproductive organs removed and hope it goes away. Since I was to far advanced in the disease to even try the pregnancy option we were left with a new type of drug/surgery treatment that would take up to six months. Everything in that time was terrifying. What we didn't know at the time of our move is that Heavenly Father had put us in a town with one of the leading specialists on Endo. We choose to go through a type of chemo that included going through 6 months of chemical menopause. We started treatments and hoped for the best.

Endometriosis can invade organs at will, and it had already invaded my colon to the point of requiring surgery in 2004 (of course they didn't realize it was endo at the time)and by 2007, half way through the treatment, something was wrong. I was in so much pain it was difficult to stand or walk. Dr. Stokes decided to go in and do surgery early and what he found was amazing. Three nerve bunches had grown around the endo and now that the chemo was shrinking the endo tissue those nerve bunches had gone crazy and needed to be cauterized. He spent 2 1/2 hours lazering and cleaning my internal organs and actually had to detach my uterus (it should be free floating) from my body. The pain from the internal burns combined with the hot flashes from the chemical menopause (I still had 3 months left of the chemo treatments) was like nothing I can even describe. I started suffering debilitating migraines and had to have a permanent IV (called a pick line) put in my arm. There was still a tumor on the back side of the right ovary that we were waiting to see shrink and in the back of our minds the distant dream that maybe someday all of this pain would lead to good health and a miracle.
I had finished chemo in Jan of 2008. By March however I knew something internally was wrong, and sure enough a routine scan showed that a new tumor was growing on the front of the right ovary. Our only options where either to rip everything out or to have the right ovary removed and hope the we would be able to get pregnant (putting the disease into remission) before the disease jumped to the left. Since we wanted to have children this was the option we choose.
On April 30th 2008 I lost a right ovary, and felt fantastic immediately! I could tell that the disease had been lifted from me. We had so much hope!
But again in September of 2008 I was back in the hospital for 3 days with a burst blood cyst on my only remaining ovary. Dr. Stokes was very concerned. But the Bishop and his son (who was leaving on his mission soon) had given me a blessing and he felt I was meant to bear a child so we begged Dr. Stokes for a little more time to try and get pregnant.
We started a fertility drug and kept praying. Seven months later the relief society took matters into their own hands, they had a fast and prayer meeting for me and three other ladies in the ward who were also trying to get pregnant. A month later we had our miracle as did the other ladies in the ward!!!

Due to all of my surgeries I had a "high risk" pregnancy. I also had hyper stimulation from the fertility medication and promptly was put on 23 weeks of bed rest. I didn't care though, we had our "maybe baby" and I would do anything to keep that baby in the belly!
By the third trimester I was off of bed rest and swelling like a balloon in the Macy's day parade. I saw the labor and delivery unit so much that I knew all the nurses by name and one of them even had Aaron's cell phone number in her phone to call and update him if he was on duty when I was in there.
The last few weeks we had to go twice a week to get checked. Dr. Stokes decided to bring her out at 38 weeks 5 days. I was scared to have labor induced, I had heard how painful it could be but I needn't have worried. Before they even had a chance to start the medication to induce labor my water broke all on it's own and six hours later Lenna Claire arrived.

She was 8lbs 9oz and just under 21 inches long and so beautiful. But most importantly she was healthy and went home with us the next day!
We had to go back of course for jaundice (we have learned to expect thing's to go wrong!) but we made sure to get her a blessing before we left for the hospital and the 3 day visit (as projected based on her score) for critical jaundice turned into just over 48 hours!

Fast forward to now and she is four months old and thriving. A very healthy 16 pound baby with enough personality to put on her own Broadway show! She sings and dances, already has a favorite movie and song (Princess and the Frog, and La vie en Rose by Louie Armstrong) and adores playing with her stuffed animals and baby Einstein jumper! She looks more and more like her Daddy everyday and has us wrapped around her little finger. We could not be more blessed. Every hospital visit, every doctor's apt, every night spent crying in pain praying for release means nothing when we look into her amazing face.

We are a true testament to miracles and divine intervention. We shouldn't of been transferred to Eureka but we were. We shouldn't of been able to endure menopause so early in our marriage but we did. We shouldn't of gotten pregnant nor kept the baby given my medical history BUT WE DID. I credit the power of the priesthood and the priesthood blessing combined with my loving father in heaven getting me to the right doctor and the right man to stand by my side.

Every minute of every day we are thankful.