My name is Annie, and I came up with the idea of using ThreadHunters to help fund Operation Babyspaceship. I am also the creative mind behind many of the designs you will see on ThreadHunters, especially the designs involving infertility, child-loss, and mental health (as well as some nerdy designs). My husband Malcolm runs the more business side of things.
Our Story
Malcolm and I met in 2012 at Fan Expo when we both decided to try Sci-Fi Speed Dating. In those first five minutes together, we both felt an immediate connection. We hung out every day of the Con and then texted and video chatted for a couple months before making our long distance relationship official in October of that year. In January of 2013, Malcolm moved from Ottawa to Georgetown where I was living, in April we were engaged and a year later on April 26, 2014 we got married.
We are infertile. More precisely, I am infertile. I had started investigating my infertility two years before meeting Malcolm and we knew that we would have trouble getting pregnant, so we advocated for a referral to a fertility specialist and started treatment early in 2015. We were on a road trip across Canada during my two week wait following a clomid cycle, cycle monitoring and timed intercourse. I was in an A&W bathroom near the border of Manitoba and Saskatchewan when I found out that Malcolm and I were going to be parents!
The joy we felt that summer was short lived as in November our world came crashing down. Lily was born at 18 weeks 6 days gestation on November 7th, 2015. She did not survive delivery.
After taking some time to grieve and process and figure out what had gone wrong, Malcolm and I were back at the fertility clinic in the spring of 2016. After a failed clomid cycle, we moved onto letrozole and again with cycle monitoring and timed intercourse we found out in May that we were once again pregnant! We planned for me to get a preventative cerclage at 12 weeks and we thought for sure that our rainbow was on the way!
On September 17th, 2016, after weeks of bed rest and doing everything we could to save our baby, I had a terrible infection that was now threatening to take my life too. We had no choice but to remove the cerclage and let Anika be born. Mere moments later she passed away as I held her.
What followed was five years of tests, referrals, operations and investigative procedures, treatment for precancerous cells and finally the realization that my womb will not carry a baby for us. Conversations about having a hysterectomy and conversations about surrogacy soon followed along with many tears.
The Operation Babyspaceship Fundraiser
While ThreadHunters has existed for a while, it wasn’t until we began looking into and budgeting for a surrogacy journey that the true purpose for ThreadHunters existence came to light.
Infertility is not easy. Whether it’s for medical reasons or stemming from gender and sexual orientation, infertility takes a toll. We have and are continuing to feel the weight of our infertility and I do not feel comfortable just asking people for money. In my grieving and processing, I have found a healing outlet in digital art. What if I could use my drawings to raise awareness, start conversations, and help us to fund our infertility journey? What if we could then use that platform to also help others on their infertility journeys?
What you see before you is a labour of love. They say it takes a village to raise a child, sometimes it takes a village to make a child. With each and every purchase through ThreadHunters you are part of that village as the proceeds from every sale go to helping infertiles to fund their journeys to create and grow their families.
If you would like to donate without making a purchase, you may do that here.
