Fabi Powell first met her husband Josh Powell in 2014 during a night out . Both in their 20s at the time, their relationship was going incredibly well . Unfortunately, Josh was met with a rare and terminal cancer diagnosis that would take his life in 2016.
Despite this, Fabi stayed by his side, and the Powells were married in 2016, just a month before Josh’s death. And now, Fabi is ready to keep his memory alive .
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Now a widow, Fabi is in the process of using Josh’s frozen sperm for IVF treatments.
In speaking with the Pregnantish podcast , Fabi explained that it was Josh’s idea to have his sperm frozen, knowing how limited his time was.
Despite knowing that he wouldn’t be around to see his child grow up, Josh wanted it for Fabi.
“How amazing would it be to have a little piece of me live on forever? You would be the most incredible mom,” Fabi remembered Josh once telling her, as People reports .
For Fabi, the decision to go ahead with IVF treatments wasn’t immediate.
“It wasn’t like immediately after he passed away I’m like, ‘Let’s do this because I want a piece of him back,'” she said. “I wanted to make the right decisions and do it for the right reasons, so I gave myself four years.”
After experiencing the pandemic, Fabi felt it was time to go forward.
She continued, “It was after lovely Covid lockdown that I was like ‘Family is everything to me. What am I waiting for? I haven’t met the second love of my life Josh was it.”
“I wanted him to be the father of my children. It’s time.”
Fabi has taken to Instagram to update her followers on the journey, from when she first began taking the required medications, to when she began egg retrievals to begin trying for embryos.
Fabi began IVF treatments in early 2021, and the process has been ongoing.
People further reports that she’s had many complications throughout the process, including medical professionals disagreeing with her decision, and complications with retrieving the frozen sperm as well.
And the genetic mutation that caused Josh’s cancer in the first place poses an added risk.
“My case is very complicated because we know that Josh and his mom carried the BRACA2 mutation,” Fabi said. “Because I have the ability to eradicate that from our family and the devastation we all went through because of this cancer mutation, I have chosen to genetically test our embryos to try and avoid that mutation.”
“It’s a 50/50 chance, it’s a crapshoot whether or not our healthy embryos are going to be BRACA positive or negative.”
Fabi has undergone five egg retrievals in the time since she began her IVF journey, but they have yielded very few healthy embryos for transfer.
In an Instagram update, Fabi shared that she only has one healthy embryo with which to attempt a transfer.
She wrote in her post, “The pressure on that one little miracle makes me physically ill thinking about it but in the same breath, I know it only takes one and I’m so grateful to have another chance.”
In a more recent update, she shared that she and her doctors, “decided to slow down and do a little more testing before jumping into an embryo transfer.”
“Because the stakes are so high with this next transfer we are going to spend the next few months making sure we’re not missing anything that would possibly lead to another failed transfer.”
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