Onslow mother pregnant with second baby after years of struggles
Jacksonville mom Haley Rexroat is feeling extra thankful this Mother’s Day, as she nears the birth of her second baby girl.
Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 8, a day of honor and appreciation for moms everywhere. For a while, Rexroat didn’t think she’d get to experience the holiday as a mother.
“We decided in July of 2018 that we wanted to go ahead and start our family, and so, it took us about a year and a half, roughly, to the first pregnancy and that was in February of 2020,” Rexroat said. “Then we ended up losing that one, and then we got pregnant again in June of 2020.”
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Rexroat said she and her husband, Seth, lost that one at the end of July, which ended up being an ectopic pregnancy, meaning the egg attached outside of the uterus, in this case, in her fallopian tube.
“Then the doctors told me it was pretty much impossible for me to get pregnant again,” Rexroat said.
That is until Rexroat was. At least she was sure.
“The doctor told me, ‘Just don’t worry about it, it’s impossible for you to be pregnant again,'” Rexroat said. “And then I was, and that was very unexpected, and that was my rainbow baby, the one that just turned one. That one made it, that was a rough pregnancy though, we did have issues and stuff.”
A rainbow baby is a term to describe a healthy baby born after losing one or more babies to stillbirths, miscarriages or other infant deaths.
About five and a half months after giving birth to baby Callie Mae, Rexroat said she became pregnant again.
“That was also very unexpected because it took us two years to get one successful pregnancy, so, that was quite a shock,” Rexroat said.
She said she was told they were going to lose this one as well. The doctors told Rexroat it was a molar pregnancy, and that she needed to have surgery right away to remove it.
A molar pregnancy, according to the Cleveland Clinic, occurs when an egg and sperm join incorrectly at fertilization and a noncancerous tumor forms instead of a healthy placenta.
Instead of listening to the doctors and ending the pregnancy, Rexroat chose to do more monitoring instead, coming in every two days for ultrasounds and bloodwork.
She’s now 31 weeks pregnant.
“Everything’s been perfect so far,” Rexroat said. “She’s perfectly healthy, we’ve had no issues, so, it’s kind of crazy.”
She said she knew a molar pregnancy can be extremely dangerous, but at the time, the baby had a heartbeat, and she just couldn’t end it.
As Mother’s Day nears, Rexroat said she wouldn’t even know where to begin to describe her emotions.
“Honestly, there’s just a lot of emotions really,” Rexroat said. “I don’t even know where to begin with that, because honestly, for a while, it was something I thought would never happen, after what we went through and losing two back to back, and then the issues we had during that pregnancy, where she should not even be here today.”
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For women having issues similar to what Rexroat experienced, she said to not give up.
“If it’s something that you really want, and some people, when they’re on that road and they’re having loss after loss, they decide that they’re just done and that’s OK too, but if it’s something that you really want, just don’t give up,” Rexroat said.
Although she said she’d ideally love to have a boy in the future, Rexroat said she’s not sure she wants to try because of everything she’s been through, but as Mother’s Day approaches this weekend, she will be overjoyed in celebrating with her husband, rainbow baby and little girl on the way.
Reporter Morgan Starling can be reached at mstarling@gannett.com
