To know who Celise is, you first need to know her parents. Dillon and Mason met during college while studying abroad, became fast friends, and stayed in touch after the school year finished. A few months later when Dillon decided to visit the US, they made plans to meet up. When he saw her waiting for him at baggage claim he ran over, scooped her up in a big hug, and told her she’d be in love with him by the end of the week. She had no idea how right he was. Two months later she moved to England to be with him, and two years later they were married.
They were still young, so starting a family wasn’t the first thing on their list. There’s plenty of time, right? But by the time they were ready, pregnancy just didn’t work out as they hoped.
One month before they planned to start trying for a baby, they found out they were already pregnant! But that immense joy soon turned to heartbreak as they found out they lost the pregnancy just a few weeks later. They tried to stay positive with thoughts like “at least we know we can get pregnant” and “miscarriages are so common, I’m sure everything will be ok”.
Cue Morgan Freeman: Everything was not ok.
What followed was 7 years of losses, failed IVF procedures, and anguish. Mason went on to have 6 more losses with her body, experienced 2 failed embryo transfers, and endured 6 grueling egg retrievals. After exhausting all known medical interventions, she knew her body would never be able to give them the child they so desperately wanted to meet. Following a lot of hard discussions, they decided to pursue surrogacy with their remaining embryos.
The hardships didn’t end there, as they went through two more failed transfers before finally getting the good news they’d been dreaming about for nearly a decade—their surrogate was pregnant and the baby had a heartbeat. That heartbeat was the most glorious sound they had ever heard.
Everything was going well until it wasn’t. At 37 weeks, our beautiful surrogate was rushed to an emergency c-section due to Celise’s lack of movement and breathing. When she was born, she let out one tiny scream before needing to be intubated immediately. They discovered she has pneumonia and a few congenital heart defects. Despite their best efforts, she is still struggling to improve, and her heart condition is getting worse. We can’t hold her, we can’t look into her eyes, we can’t even kiss her little nose. We just want to save our baby girl’s life.
Saving Celise 