Cassandre and Faith Rich’s daughters, Audrey Jane and Marley Joe.Photo:Courtesy of the Rich Family
Courtesy of the Rich Family
Coordinating a miracle birth takes a little planning and a whole lot of luck — just ask Florida couple Cassandre and Faith Rich, who wanted to carry each other’s biological child and have the babies delivered within a few days of each other.
The Jacksonville couple’s doctor at the Florida Institute for Reproductive Medicine advised them to downgrade their expectations.
“This is the first time I had a couple who wanted to be pregnant and deliver at the same time,” says Dr. Teresa Erb. “We cautioned them that it might not work the way you want. But both transfers worked and they both went into labor days apart. They were determined. And it worked.”
Faith welcomed Audrey Joe on March 24, 2023, and Cassandre gave birth to Marley Jane three days later on March 27.
Cassandre and Faith Rich.Courtesy of the Rich Family
“I got to be able to create a bond with a being that I’m making who may not genetically be mine, but who gave her life,” says Faith, 29. “And everyone will know these are and will always be our children.”
Female same-sex couples both have the option to carry, which generally results in a serious discussion about who would be the one to become pregnant. They also have the option of using their own eggs or their partner’s eggs in what is known as a reciprocal IVF.
No matter which egg carrying option is used, these couples need a sperm donor. They can choose between an anonymous donor from a sperm bank or a known donor who is often a friend or a relative of the non-gestational partner.
Faith did not want to have someone she knew to donate, so the couple opted for the same anonymous sperm donor for both of their children, making Audrey Joe and Marley Jane biological half-siblings.
“We narrowed it down to the physical attributes we felt would represent us,” Cassandre explains. “We wanted to be able to look into our children’s faces and see us and our family and we got very fortunate.”
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“My sister does have a son with her ex-wife, and my family said some hateful things,” Faith says. “I didn’t want any bigotry [with the genetic and non-genetic children] so the simplest way was to switch it up.”
Their pregnancy plan of carrying their babies during the same period had a time tangle: It is not uncommon for women to go through several cycles before becoming pregnant.
“If it had just been a donor insemination, it would have been really easy,” Erb says with a laugh. “It took a bit of coordination on our part, with the menstrual cycle and their treatments to do the embryo transfers synchronously.”
But their first hurdle was getting pregnant and having a viable pregnancy against some heavy odds.
Erb told them the statistical chances of becoming pregnant in one cycle through IVF was about 50 percent for women under 35. The rate goes down for women as they get older because they are born with a certain number of eggs and never make any more eggs. Those eggs accumulate genetic errors as a function of time.
And Erb warned Faith at their first appointment on Feb. 1, 2022, that her chances were only about 30 percent because of her fertility issues.
“I was devastated,” Faith says. “Like 30 percent chance it was even going to take, and I barely had any eggs, so they didn’t think they could retrieve anything from me. So it’s a stressful journey but if you have the right partner, it makes it worth it.”
The two first met through Tinder in 2016, but Faith ghosted Cassandre because she had some things she had to work through and wasn’t ready for a relationship. Fast forward six months later when Cassandre saw Faith at a rock festival and confronted her about her silent exit. Faith apologized, and they both decided to work it out.
“It was kind of just fate,” Cassandre says. “We got married in 2020, and she was very clear that she wanted children.”
Cassandre, who had previously been married, had been a little more reluctant to take on the task of motherhood in the past.
“But once Faith and I got together, I knew if I were ever to go through life’s greatest adventure of having children, there’s nobody else I could do it with,” Cassandre says. “I didn’t just want to be a mother, I wanted to be a mother with Faith.”
Now that their daughters have arrived, Cassandre and Faith are looking at the issues of being a same-sex couple in an area that has not been particularly supportive.
“Do we want to stay in Florida? Do we feel safe in Florida? I mean, it sounds dramatic, but do we need an escape plan?” says Cassandre. “It’s a very sad and unfortunate reality of being part of our community living in, honestly, a hostile state.”
Faith Rich and newborns.Courtesy of the Rich Family
Faith grew up in a small town in Florida, and while her mother, who has terminal cancer, “supported me growing up, being who I was,” she says, she still feels the community where she grew up does not feel friendly these days.
“My hometown, it got to the point where we couldn’t even go and have dinner at the local Cracker Barrel,” Faith says. “It really broke my heart because that’s where I grew up, and these are people who know me.”
Faith, who works as a vet tech, says she moved to the Jacksonville area because it made her too uncomfortable to stay in her hometown.
“Y’all are supposed to be my community, that’s what was preached and how I was raised, but because of who I am and who I love, I can’t live safely there,” Faith says. “I’m not going to bring our two beautiful girls into a world like that.”
Cassandre Rich and newborns.Courtesy of the Rich Family
Cassandre works as a senior project manager for a company based out of Tennessee, so they have been thinking of moving there because her co-workers and company have been very supportive.
“We are deciding what kind of childhood we want to give these girls, how we want to raise them,” Cassandre says. “Do we move to Tennessee and have that support system? We are at a point of transition. We just want to give these girls the world.”
source: people.com
