Aly Taylor, star of TLC’s “Rattled,” a show about what it’s like to be a mom, is getting ready for halloween with her beautiful daughters after she thought she wouldn’t be able to have children at all because of breast cancer.
We aren’t sure the details of Aly’s case, or how she was able to become a mom after chemotherapy, but we do know that for most women who have chemotherapy without preserving their eggs first, egg donors are often a recommended solution.
Breast cancer and fertility -- Aly's journey
Aly Taylor’s Halloween pic of her daughter
Aly Taylor and her husband Josh, the young stars of TLC’s “Rattled,” which follows four couples through their experiences as new parents, were planning to have a child when breast cancer made that a lot more difficult. Now, in a modern day miracle, they are the overjoyed parents to three beautiful children.
Now, she and her daughters Vera, Genevieve and Lydia, are shopping for halloween costumes, and Vera who seem to love wearing big lion and dinosaur hats, and yelling “rawr” as her mom snaps photos.
“We LITERALLY spent an hour in Target last week while the girls tried on every costume they could! What is your family dressing up as for Halloween this year? [ jack-o-lantern emoji]
I have so many sweet memories dressing up with my sister and sweet friends getting candy each year! I love watching the whole family dress up. Why are costumes so much fun???”
And her supporters loved the photos, commenting about how cute the girls are, and how much they love the cotumes, “Adorable pictures! Vera’s hair looks so much lighter!”
“Oh my heart[heart] This is too sweet and adorable [hearts]”
Others wrote about their own kids and the costumes they would be donning for halloween, “My two girls are going to be Maleficent and Sleeping beauty”
Aly’s journey with cancer and fertility
Aly and Josh were married for three years before they decided to have a child. When Aly, at age 24, read that sore breasts were a sign of pregnancy, she started feeling her breasts and found a lump, which turned out to be very aggressive, stage 3 breast cancer. Aly went through 16 rounds of chemo, followed by double mastectomy and 30 radiation treatments.
"I didn't have time to preserve my fertility, and as a woman who really hoped I would be a mom, I was devastated there wouldn't be time because my cancer treatment started in two weeks," Aly told She Knows in a new interview. "We were scared and worried, but Josh said, 'Ali you have to be here for us to preserve your life, not your fertility.' We prayed and believed my womb would be protected."
Doctors told Aly she had less than a 20 percent chance of getting rid of her cancer, and if they could, that there was a pretty good chance of recurrence within the first 5 years. Now, Aly is in remission and she’s publishing a book about her experiences that’s out in May.
“Inspiration to write this came from me sitting in a bookstore finding little to nothing hopeful about my age and aggressive, advanced stage breast cancer diagnosis. I promised myself I would write a book once I survived cancer,” she wrote in a recent Instagram post.
One painful side effect of Aly’s cancer treatments is that the chemotherapy and radiation severely damaged her reproductive system. Doctors told her it would be next to impossible to get pregnant, and that if she did become pregnant, that she’d likely miscarry.
After her treatment, the couple found a baby that they wanted to adopt. There were a few hiccups, like when the baby’s birth mom thought she might want to keep the child, but they ultimate brought home a girl named Genevieve. “We realized we would have never had Genevieve had I not gone through cancer. We really didn't know if we would be parents again. We went through so much to have her and were so happy," Aly said.
Nine months later, Aly learned she was actually pregnant. "For a long time it didn't feel real because I had accepted that I wouldn't have a baby biologically and given up dream of carrying a baby," she said.
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