Motherhood a blessing for Crown Point woman, a cancer survivor who had two children by surrogate
'God has been so good,' Fair said.
Fair said she and her husband are also thankful for modern medicine that allowed them to have their biological children and the two women who carried and gave birth to the babies since her doctors advised her not to go forward with any pregnancies in her body.
'We found two amazing surrogates,' she said.
Fair, a 32-year-old mother of two under 2, has battled and beaten cancer through most of her life starting with her first diagnosis at age 7.
The Crown Point woman is now happily settled into a busy life with husband, Caleb, and children Archer, who was born July 28, 2023, and Magnolia Grace, born March 27.
'Becoming a mother is a huge blessing and now that our family is completed, it solidifies that blessing,' she said.
Her Mother's Day plans include dining with her immediate and extended families at Gamba Ristorante in Merrillville.
'I'm so grateful to God to give me a big family and one that is supportive and loving,' she said.
Fair said her life is complete now but she has survived her share of health-related issues in the past including the grim news given to her parents, Todd and Crystal Klomp, some 25 years ago, when she was 7.
Her parents were told by doctors that their daughter had a rare type of brain tumor and had only nine months to live.
'We did sit down with her and tell her Jesus was going to take her home. She just shook her head and was quiet,' Crystal Klomp said.
All Fair remembers of that dark time in her life was having ongoing headaches, throwing up and struggling with her balance.
'I know I didn't feel good,' she said.
Fair was initially misdiagnosed in 2000 with high-grade astrocytoma ependymoma, then shortly after diagnosed with pilomyxoid astrocytoma.
Despite her ongoing health challenges, Fair has not let those issues stop her from her dreams.
She went on to graduate from Purdue University Northwest receiving both her bachelor's and master's degrees in education with a concentration in school counseling.
Following graduation, Fair worked as the school counselor at Lincoln Elementary School in Cedar Lake and married Caleb Fair on April 6, 2021, after meeting him online.
Three years ago Fair and her husband, an IT consultant who works in Chicago, bought a house in Crown Point with plans to start their family.
Doctors advised Fair, because of her cancer, not to carry and deliver her own children so with that in mind she and her husband had a cousin who had agreed to act as a surrogate.
'My doctors told me that my tumor could grow again if I carried my own child. We wanted to play it safe,' she said.
Knowing that she and Caleb wanted to have children, Fair had her eggs retrieved before her six-month cancer treatment.
The couple had a total of 14 embryos awaiting implantation, she said.
The implementation worked on the first try.
Archer was born in Chicago July 28, 2023, and Fair and her husband were staying at a hotel nearby and were there when the surrogate, Tricia Holloway, gave birth.
Archer weighed 8 pounds, 1 oz.
When it came time to have a second child, the couple utilized social media and found Nikki Childs, a Fort Wayne woman who agreed to be a surrogate.
'The whole process was so different from the first one,' she said.
Magnolia Grace weighed 7 pounds, 3 ounces, and basically was born right after the surrogate's water broke.
'The nurses had to catch her (Magnolia),' she said.
Cancer-related brain surgeries have continued for Fair including last September and in December, all after she was a mother to Archer.
'I had three surgeries in three months,' she said.
Fair also has to continue to keep an eye on her health including an upcoming brain scan which is taken at Northwestern Memorial in Chicago and then read at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.
'Once a year I have to go back,' she said.
She's thinking positive thoughts.
'The positive side is I'm done with all these surgeries and feel I'm almost back to normal,' she said.
She and her husband also hope to provide happy Mother's Day celebrations for others wanting to become parents through their unused embryos.
'We have leftover embryos and will 'adopt' them out,' she said.
These days Fair is primarily a stay-at-home mom but also works part-time as a social media director at Northwest Indiana Cancer Kids (NICK) Foundation.
'Being a mom and working part-time for NICK is a blessing,' she said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Vogue
3 days ago
- Vogue
How to Navigate a Trauma Anniversary
A year after I was raped at 18, I sank down on the sidewalk, unable to keep going. I closed my eyes and didn't get up until a friend found me and helped me into bed, where I didn't speak or open my eyes for hours. I felt like I was trapped in time, unable to access relief until after the day had passed. A reaction like that, I would later learn, is common among survivors of sexual assault on their trauma anniversary—including those who no longer have an active PTSD diagnosis. Sara Schmidt, a clinical psychologist and expert in dialectical behavior therapy, says that on trauma anniversaries, her clients tend to 'start isolating themselves more, and sometimes they don't even realize they're doing it.' After 15 years of working through my own trauma, I wrote a book, Tell Me What You Like: An Honest Discussion of Sex and Intimacy After Sexual Assault, to help others do the same. Through personal healing and research into how to better cope with trauma's fallout, I've learned a lot about how to navigate trauma anniversaries. Here, a little of what I've gathered: What is a trauma anniversary? Trauma anniversaries mark the day a person's traumatic experience occurred. Not all people experience them the same way, but licensed professional counselor Kim Rippy explains that the powerful response a trauma anniversary can trigger comes from the brain's mechanisms for survival. Our minds pick out 'data points present in the initial trauma' and 'encode them as red flags for future experiences,' Rippy says. Our brains and bodies tend to remember dates—as well as smells, sounds, and visual cues—linked to a traumatic event in an attempt to protect us from future harm. For those whose trauma took the form of compounded, constant oppression, its aftermath will look a bit different. 'In marginalized groups, sometimes the trauma that they experience is more related to chronic invalidation,' observes Vibh Forsythe Cox, PhD, director of the Marsha M. Linehan Dialectical Behavior Therapy Training clinic. Though these folks can also experience trauma anniversaries, other triggers (or even just other dates, such as Mother's Day or Christmas) may affect them more deeply. What to do on the day Dr. Cox points out that no matter what time of year it is, you can start preparing for a trauma anniversary by connecting with a new therapist. If you already have a therapist, you can plan for additional sessions around the day. Otherwise, seeing loved ones can help us manage trauma anniversaries; or, if you don't have a strong social network nearby, Matthew Robinson, PhD, program director of the Trauma Continuum Program at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, suggests taking advantage of Zoom, FaceTime, or even texting. 'It's helpful to be able to talk about things openly and honestly with someone who's going to get it,' he says, even if that person can't be there in person.
Indianapolis Star
4 days ago
- Indianapolis Star
Colts RT Braden Smith 'in a spectacular place' after career-threatening battle with OCD
WESTFIELD, Ind. — Braden Smith has been looking forward to this training camp. To this season. A chance to experience the joy of football again, freed from the stranglehold obsessive-compulsive disorder placed on him last year. A specific type of OCD, religious scrupulosity, overwhelmed Smith last year, forcing him to leave the Colts with five games left in the season in a desperate attempt to find an answer for what was going through his mind. The search took Smith through therapy, medicine, a Colorado health clinic and finally a controversial treatment with psychedelics in Mexico, but the 29-year-old right tackle emerged on the other side last spring with his OCD under control. In his own words: Colts RT Braden Smith's desperate, life-threatening fight vs OCD A half a year later, Smith is back on the practice field at Grand Park, ready to enjoy football again after his battle with OCD caused him to briefly consider retirement last fall. 'I'm in a spectacular place, honestly,' Smith said. 'I've learned a lot about myself. I've learned different tools and strategies, I've had a great support system here and at home.' When Smith returned from an ibogaine treatment in Mexico that he believes erased the bad habits his mind had created — internal compulsions that caused him to repetitively pray, repent or declare his faith — he began intensive therapy for OCD. In Smith's own words, he still has OCD. But it no longer has a hold on him, no longer serves as a crushing weight on him at all times, forcing him to try to justify himself to a perfect God. 'There's not boxes I need to check off, there's not things I need to do,' Smith said. 'It's not perfect, but it's kind of allowed me to give it all to Him and not worry about what else can happen.' Smith, a Christian who was baptized last May after deciding to devote himself fully to his faith, has found better balance in his belief, a pursuit of God based on love rather than guilt. 'You have to find out what is healthy and what is not healthy. It looks a little bit different for every person,' Smith said. 'My relationship to God doesn't have to be a cookie-cutter type of thing. … Luckily, the whole point is just (having) a relationship.' Playing football again on the practice fields at Grand Park is a reminder of how far Smith has come since last winter. One of the statements that set off alarm bells for Courtney was when Smith floated the idea of retirement last September. Her husband has always loved playing football, loved playing the game, and the OCD had stripped football of the joy and fulfillment he felt playing the game. The Colts tried to help Smith. Instead of ignoring or downplaying his symptoms, the coaching staff helped Smith find treatment and medicine, allowed the veteran right tackle to avoid going to meetings when OCD began to overtake him and supported his decision to miss the rest of the season. The day before Thanksgiving, Smith showed up at the practice facility and headed right back home, the final piece of the puzzle that convinced Courtney to tell her husband he needed to leave his team and go to a mental-health facility in Colorado. Before he left, Smith told the rest of the offensive linemen and the coaches exactly what had been going on throughout the season, and the Colts responded by protecting and supporting the man who has been a pillar of the offensive line since 2018. Smith started 12 games and played 731 snaps last season. But he was far from the player he could be. 'Last year, I was just kind of out there,' Smith said. 'I was going through the motions, but I didn't feel that edge that players have. I didn't have that last year. I didn't feel that.' Smith hasn't been able to be himself in years. Before the scrupulosity took over Smith's life last year, he played through a painful knee injury in 2023, an injury that cost him seven games and ultimately forced him to undergo surgery on the joint. Physically, Smith feels better than he has in years. Mentally, it's possible that Smith feels better than he ever has before. When Smith first started going to therapy last fall, his psychologist told Courtney he could trace her husband's OCD back to at least the third grade, if not before that. For the first time, Smith believes he understands his OCD and has a handle on his condition. 'Instead of obsessing over other things, I can obsess about my craft,' Smith said. 'Turn a negative into the positive.' When Smith first talked about his battle with OCD in April, Courtney said she believed her husband could finally be the person he's meant to be. Half a year later, Smith has no reason to believe anything has changed since then. 'This is probably the best I've felt in a really long time,' Smith said. 'It's kind of nice to see everything come together. Now, I can just go play football.' For the love of the game alone.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Deion Sanders had his bladder removed earlier this year after doctors found a tumor, says he's beaten cancer
Deion Sanders said on Monday he has fought – and beaten – cancer after having his bladder removed, shedding light on the latest health struggles that have plagued the Hall of Famer. The University of Colorado head football coach, 57, and members of his medical team said in a news conference Monday that he underwent the removal after a malignant tumor was found on his bladder. He urged others to make sure they are on top of their health and getting seen by doctors. 'Get checked out,' Sanders emphatically said, 'because it could have been a whole other gathering if I hadn't.' Sanders, who has battled other health issues in the past, said this was his 14th surgery and thinks he lost 25 pounds. 'We're helping some folks today. There's some folks right now calling the doctors, scheduling checkups. There's some wives out there saying, 'Baby, I told you. … Because if it could happen to Prime, baby, it could happen to you,'' Sanders said. In 2023, Sanders underwent surgery for blood clots in both of his legs but avoided having a foot amputation. Two years before that, he had two toes amputated due to blood clots while he was the head coach at Jackson State University. Sanders, entering his third season as the Buffaloes' head coach, had missed Colorado's on-campus camps earlier this year because of the health issue, which at the time had been unspecified. Sanders told reporters he spoke to players about his health on Sunday. 'I always knew I was going to coach again,' Sanders said. 'I was always going to coach. It was never in my spirit, in my heart, that God wouldn't allow me to coach again.' Sanders said he can't control his new bladder – 'I depend on Depends,' he lightheartedly said – but he conveyed his mood is positive despite the circumstances. 'Slowly but surely, I built myself back up to where I'm able, I'm strong, I'm ready,' Sanders said. 'I'm still probably about 12 pounds down. I'm going to get that right. … But it has been a tremendous journey, and I'm truly thankful that God – God is so good.' Sanders and the Buffaloes host Georgia Tech in the team's season opener on August 29. This story has been updated with additional information.
