Hilary delivers the best gift of all for her sister

Last Wednesday and Thursday were full of tears of joy and happiness for sisters Alissa Dehl and Hilary Nuss after Hudson Bruce Dehl made a grand entrance around 3 a.m. on Dec. 16. Hilary was a gestational surrogate for her older sister, Alissa. The girls grew up in West Union the daughters of Rodney and Kathy Senner, who are proud of their girls beyond works. (Submitted photo)

 

Hilary delivers the best gift of all for her sister

 

 

Janell Bradley

Contributing Writer

 

 

As a child, Alissa Senner saw her little sister as the little tagalong.

“There were many times she would sleep in my bed, even though she had a perfectly good bed in a bedroom of her own,” laughed Alissa, now married and living in Omaha.

“As we got older, we got closer,” she continued. “It’s funny, they tell you that you’ll end up being best friends when you grow up … and I have found that to be true.”

So when Alissa learned she would likely always struggle to carry her own child to a full-term birth, it was that younger sister who stepped in and offered the ultimate gift: gestational surrogacy.

Alissa and Doug Dehl’s back story as to how they met and the challenges they’ve overcome in bringing their little boy into the world is the kind of thing movies are made of.

The daughter of Rod and Kathy Senner of West Union, Alissa graduated from North Fayette High School in 1997. She was living in Kansas City in 2007 when she started dating her future husband, Doug. It took match.com to connect the couple, even though they lived just a couple miles from one another in Kansas City and shared a common background of growing up in northeast Iowa.

“Doug grew up in Waterloo and graduated from West High School,” Alissa explained. “His mom, Beverly (Fick), grew up in Sumner, so we actually knew people in common.”

When Doug and Alissa decided to marry on Sept. 18, 2010, the officiant was the Rev. Bill Thalacker. When she was growing up, Alissa had attended Trinity Lutheran Church in Hawkeye when Thalacker served as a minister there. Doug’s family got to know Pastor Thalacker when he later served Trinity Lutheran in Waterloo.

After the couple married, Doug was offered an opportunity with a new CVS Pharmacy in Omaha, Neb., where Doug had immediate family living.

“We thought the closeness would be nice, as we wanted to start a family of our own,” explained Alissa, who is an investment account administrator in the wealth management division of a bank.

“Little did we know it would take much longer than we ever anticipated,” she says of their disappointment at learning of fertility problems.

Working with a doctor specializing in infertility, the couple learned that Alissa was born with an abnormal uterus. The condition means Alissa’s womb is half the size it should be, and only one Fallopian tube connects one of the ovaries to the uterus. The abnormality, while rare, is believed to affect one in 1,000 women, but often isn’t discovered unless the woman has difficulty conceiving or carrying a baby to term.

While some women with the condition still get pregnant naturally and give birth (about 47 percent), that wasn’t the case for Alissa and Doug.

“The doctors felt that with their assistance, we would be able to have a biological child,” Alissa continued.

Intrauterine insemination was unsuccessful, so the couple’s doctor prepared them for in-vitro fertilization. Although there were positive results with retrievals and fertilization, when it came to transfer/implantation, every pregnancy test was negative.

Disappointed with their lack of success to date, Alissa and Doug began to consider a gestational carrier. There were discussions with staff at the doctor’s office, but Alissa says they decided to try another infertility clinic in Omaha, even though there was a three-month waiting period.

“We felt a new sense of hope after meeting with our new doctor,” related Alissa. “She reviewed our file, and felt confident she could help us.  She wanted to start with IUI again, which we agreed to, but quickly moved on to IVF.”

On just the eighth day after transfer, Alissa took a pregnancy test at home.

“You wouldn’t believe the shock I had at 5:00 in the morning when I saw the faint second line on the pregnancy test,” she said, the memory still vivid. 

Sadly, the couple’s excitement was short-lived. At about six weeks, there was no longer a heartbeat.

The Dehls repeated the process, had another positive pregnancy test and even a couple of ultrasounds that looked great. But at about eight weeks, again the heartbeat stopped.

Thinking they needed to take a break from the emotional roller coaster, Doug and Alissa began to think more seriously about Alissa’s sister’s offer to be a gestational carrier.

“Throughout this entire journey, my sister, Hilary, had always said she would carry a baby for us,” Alissa recalled.

“When we found out about the difficulties Alissa could possibly have with carrying a child, it was something I offered right away,” said Hilary, who lives in Hawkeye with her husband, Fred, and children Kamdyn, 5, and Kaelyn, 7.

While grateful for the offer, Alissa realized the significance of what she was asking.

She and Doug decided to do one more round of IVF, which resulted in a negative test for pregnancy.

“With that, we got our doctor’s blessing, and we hit the ground running toward surrogacy,” Alissa went on.

“We all hoped this was not the road we would travel, as we all wanted Alissa to experience this on her own,” added Hilary. “But at the end of the day, they are going to be parents, regardless if she is carrying the baby herself or not.”

As the two couples discussed how the gestational surrogacy would be carried out, sisters Alissa and Hilary learned of Hilary’s school classmate Heidi (Einck) Goettsch experiencing a surrogacy journey that resulted in twins.

“She became a great resource for us,” noted Alissa. “The legalities of the process are a pretty painful process, but we got through it.”

Alissa worked with an attorney in Iowa to prepare a contract for both parties. She said part of the process includes filing an order with the court, stating the child although carried by Hilary, is biologically and genetically Doug and Alissa’s offspring.

The Dehls still had frozen embryos from their own efforts to get pregnant via IVF, but there were other considerations, including blood work required by the FDA.

In April of this year, husbands Fred Nuss and Doug Dehl passed the time in an Omaha clinic waiting room as Alissa watched her sister, Hilary, undergo the process with which she was very familiar by this time. Nervous for herself and Hilary, Alissa said she was overwhelmed with gratitude for the gift Hilary and Fred were willing to give Doug and her.

Following a very long eight-day wait, Hilary’s early morning pregnancy test confirmed the news the two couples had been hoping for: they were pregnant! And a little later they learned, “It’s a boy!”

For her part, Hilary said she enjoys all the aspects of pregnancy, except perhaps the pain associated with actual delivery.

“It is an amazing process.  I tried to share as much about the baby as possible with his parents – movements, hiccups, and I definitely make it known when he is being mean to me,” she teased.

“Alissa and I have been close for so long that not much has changed,” Hilary said of her only sibling.

“We still talk the same amount, but the subject of our conversations sure has changed.”

The Dehls took part in all the initial prenatal appointments. Living four hours from Hilary’s obstetrician in Waterloo, the two families used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or speakerphone to communicate during Hilary’s appointments for which they couldn’t physically be there.

As for explaining to Hilary’s children how the baby their mommy was carrying would go to live with Aunt Alissa, the sisters worked through that with little difficulty.

As a gift to her nephew Kamdyn and niece Kaelyn, Alissa bought the book “The Kangaroo Pouch.”

Hilary explained, “After our 12-week appointment, Fred and I read it to them, and then we explained that Aunt Lissy’s tummy is broken, so their baby was put into my tummy to grow.  And after the baby was born, it would go live with Alissa and Doug.”

“After a few questions, they had grasped what was going on,” said Hilary.

Although Hilary and her obstetrician had a plan to induce labor on Dec. 30 at 39 weeks, little Hudson Bruce Dehl was so excited to meet his new family, he arrived early.

When Hilary’s blood pressure went higher than desired, her OB/GYN decided to induce labor. Alissa and Doug left Omaha to join her at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo.

At 2:59 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 16, Hudson Bruce Dehl entered the world, weighing just over six pounds. Hudson’s middle name is in honor of his late grandfather, Bruce, who lived in Waterloo.

While the delivery resulted in complications for Hilary that required an extra day of hospitalization, she said it didn’t change how she felt about giving her sister the gift of a child.

“I was truly honored they let me do this for them. It was amazing to be able to give them the gift they have been after for so long,” she said through tears and overwhelming emotion after being released from the hospital.

Alissa was similarly overcome with emotion in attempting to describe how it felt to hold her infant son for the first time.

“I still can’t believe she did this for us,” the new mom said of the sister who will always hold a special place in her heart.

Hudson may have arrived a little early, “but he’s perfectly fine,” said Alissa.

Gazing upon the infant’s sweet face, she added, “I think he has my chin and maybe my nose. I kind of think he has Doug’s eyes. He’s really perfect.”

“There are just no words,” Hilary said of the experience. “It was great. It was so worth it.”

In reaching the decision to be a gestational carrier, Hilary and her husband had had several conversations prior to moving forward.

“I never had to convince Fred; he wanted to help just as much as I did,” she related. “The only reservation we had was my own health and well-being. Generally pregnancies happen with minimal complications, but we had to talk about all of the what-ifs.

“I have two children of my own and a long life I want to share with my family,” Alissa’s younger sister continued. “We had full faith in our doctors and left the rest in God’s hands.”

She added, “Fred and I were fortunate enough not to have had to face these infertility issues, and it really opens your eyes when someone so close to you is dealing with this – what they really endure.”

Hilary admitted that she’s at a loss for words to characterize the love and support she received from her husband throughout the surrogacy, but the experience has made her own little family all the more precious to her.

“We’re so proud of both our daughters, although it’s hard to express how special it all is,” closed Kathy Senner, the girls’ mother. “I get teary-eyed whenever we talk about it. We are so blessed.”

 

Rate this article: 
No votes yet
Comment Here