After 13 years of heartache, an Omaha family finally had their prayers answered.
Starting a family can be a difficult decision for some couples. Making sure you are financially stable to afford the new addition, prepared to give up a lot of luxuries you have as individuals and as a couple, growing your family is one of the biggest changes you can make in your life.
For Lindsay and Brian Vargas, they would stop at nothing to finally complete their family.
They were married in 2004 and had a strong desire to become parents.
"We have spent $150,000. I've had 15 miscarriages. We've had one ectopic pregnancy," Lindsay said.
Fifteen miscarriages. She would get to week eight with each pregnancy, by week nine, there was no heartbeat, and doctors couldn't tell her why.
"He's put my case out on multiple medical boards, we've tried different things, but no one has any answers for me," Lindsay said.
The couple has tried to adopt a child after failing to successfully carry their own biological baby to term. Unfortunately, the financial burden they have taken on with fertility treatments has negatively impacted their finances, and as a result their application for adoption.
"We've been to several different agencies. A couple of them said our credit scores weren't high enough," the couple said.
Other attempts at adoption have fallen through when the biological parents decided to keep their children.
"I know in my heart at one point I would love to be a mom. I don't care how it happens," Lindsay cried.
But the couple has refused to give up, and their commitment has finally paid off.
The couple was asked often, why don't they just give up.
"There's been times we've wanted to. I felt like we should because I didn't want to see her go through it anymore," said Brian.
That's when Lindsay's sister stepped up. Kelly O'Toole has three kids of her own, and offered to be a surrogate to make her sister's dreams of being a mom come true.
"Their love for each other, I've never seen and they just deserve it," said Kelly.
But things didn't go smoothly after that.
"Once again, things started falling apart when her sister had a tumor and had to have one of her ovaries removed," said Dr. Doherty.
Having the tumor removed possibly could have saved her life, but it was another blow to the family's desire to have children.
After four artificial insemination attempts, Kelly wasn't able to get pregnant for her sister. Then in December, Lindsay and Kelly's mom unexpectedly passed away from liver failure.
"I wanted so bad on her death bed to be able to tell her you're going to finally have a grand baby, she's pregnant." said Lindsay.
The couple was defeated. In a post on their Go Fund Me page 9 month ago, they wrote, "On December 28th we transferred our last sweet baby boy into my sister Kelly. We hoped and prayed and did all kinds of superstitions. We found out the results to the transfer this past Thursday," they wrote.
"The transfer failed;(. We are not pregnant. There was a 25% chance that it wouldn't work. We fell into that statistic. We have bad luck and maybe aren't meant to be parents, or maybe the timing is just STILL not right. I don't know when or if it will ever be right," they said.
"We plan on doing some soul searching and taking time off to process this last year."
10 months later, their prayers were answered.
On October 15, Lindsay and Brian would finally become parents.
"No one knew about her. She was a secret," said Lindsay.
After seeing their story, a pregnant mom reached out to the couple about parenting her daughter, who is now named Henley.
"A birth mother who was pregnant and saw our story and she felt that God led her to us and asked if we were interested in possibly parenting her child," Lindsay said.
Since the couple had several failed adoption attempts, they were hesitant to get excited. After meeting with another family this woman had given her baby up for adoption to, they realized this was the real thing.
"I cried like an absolute baby. Absolutely sobbing," Lindsay said.
In a California delivery room, their 13-year struggle came to an end when their baby girl came into the world.
While Brian and Lindsay kept Henley a surprise for months, Lindsay's sister, Kelly, had another big one for her. She was pregnant with twins! A boy and a girl.
"I can't wait for them to have this complete family," Kelly said through tears. "It Makes me so happy."
This couple now can proudly call themselves mom and dad and they couldn't be happier.
Congratulations to the happy family!