When many couples get married, they dream of pursuing goals together, starting a family, and eventually growing old together. Life is never perfect. But, many couples find that their dreams essentially come true. One happily married couple, Kristen and Sam Tripson were living their dream. They had two children and were a happy, loving family of 4. Unfortunately, the other shoe dropped.
Sam was diagnosed with stage IV lymphoma. When it comes to cancers, stage IV is the worst because it means that the cancer has already spread.
After the diagnosis, the couple made the decision to freeze embryos. They knew that if by some miracle Sam’s cancer was cured, he may not be able to have more children due to damaging cancer treatments. The couple also felt that if Sam did not make it they wanted to ensure the possibility that together they could have one more child.
Sadly, Sam died less than a year ago. Kristen recently may the difficult but sweet decision to expand their family by undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments with their frozen embryos. She just revealed that she is 17 weeks pregnant with baby number 3. In an interview Kristen recently stated, “I’m not scared, I’m so excited to meet this little person. It’s hard to process, but just having a chance to meet another one of Sam’s children, it just blows my mind. He was so funny and so silly . . . and I love it when I see that in my children now. I get little reminders of Sam every day.”