Carolyn Savage and her husband, Sean, had three wonderful children, but in recent years, they’ve struggled to get pregnant.
Instead of getting positive pregnancy tests, Carolyn got her period over and over again. It was mentally draining and when Carolyn did get pregnant, the hopeful news was followed by miscarriages.
Eventually, the couple turned to in vitro fertilization. They prayed to God that it was answer to their prayers.
It didn’t take long for Carolyn to get pregnant, but then Sean got a phone call that he and Carolyn never could’ve expected.
Carolyn and Sean Savage got married in 1993 and had their first child a year later. But after that, Carolyn had more difficulty getting pregnant. It simply wouldn’t happen naturally.
Still, the couple had a second child soon after with the help of fertility treatments.
When Carolyn and Sean tried test tube fertilization in 2007, it had been 10 years since their last child had been born. Nine months later, daughter Mary Kate was born.
In February 2009, Carolyn had embryos implanted in an attempt to have child number four.
Surprisingly, she and Sean received the news that the IVF treatment was successful. But soon, the couple’s lives would be turned upside down.
Just a few days into the pregnancy came some shocking news. Their doctor called and admitted that the couple’s embryos had been mistakenly mixed up.
Carolyn Savage was overjoyed to be a mom again — but the baby in her stomach wasn’t hers. Carolyn had another woman’s embryo implanted in her womb.
Carolyn was forced to make the toughest decision of her life: whether to abort the child she was to give birth to. She decided to give the baby to his biological parents, even though a doctor told her it was her last chance to get pregnant.
“We moved from a position of shock to a realization that this was actually going to happen. It’s just been difficult, but we feel we made the right decisions on how to handle it,” Carolyn explained.
Giving up her baby
Sean and Carolyn decided to contact the biological parents, Shannon and Paul Morrell, who lived in Detroit.
Carolyn gave birth to a baby boy, named Logan, via Caesarean section, four weeks early.
She only had a half hour with him before she had give him to his biological parents.
“He is their son. But he
will always be my baby,” Carolyn says.
Dad Sean had the difficult task of handing Logan over to the boy’s biological parents. They were waiting in a room next to the delivery room.
After this overwhelming experience, Carolyn thought she had seen everything.
But soon happiness would return to the couple. In 2011, Carolyn and Sean announced they were expecting twins, via a surrogate mother.
“Miracle twins” Isabella and Reagen brought immense joy to the family, who had experienced so much misery and disappointment before.
“The twins have closed some of the grief we were still experiencing over what happened with Logan. They are certainly not replacement babies, but they have been the best thing for all of us,” Carolyn told the Daily Mail.
And just when you thought their lives couldn’t take any more turns, perhaps the most surprising news of all came in the spring of 2014.
Carolyn couldn’t believe her eyes when she looked at the pregnancy test, which she took at home in the bathroom.
Could it really be true?
“As my befuddled brain studied the test, I thought I must be wrong. I’m infertile. I’ve gone through countless fertility treatments over the past two decades and with the exception of a couple of IVFs, I’ve only seen two positive home pregnancy tests. What on Earth was my 45-year-old self thinking? I couldn’t be pregnant now. Could I?”
Son Nicholas Winton Savage was born in the fall of 2014 and suddenly Carolyn and Sean Savage’s family grew to eight — despite struggling with fertility for two decades.
Baby Nicholas, who was born without the use of fertility drugs, was born when mom Carolyn was 45 years old.
He has two older brothers, one big sister and twin sisters! What a wonderful and special family!
