What started as a fibroid procedure led to surprising news about an unplanned pregnancy. She is expecting to deliver her baby girl in May 2025.

Katana was suffering from intense pelvic pain and other reproductive health issues for years. She kept getting sick and struggled to understand why she experienced several miscarriages.

Having lost five babies to miscarriages between the births of her three children, Katana didn’t want to go through another painful pregnancy loss. The grief was too much to bear, and she wanted answers to her health problems.

Little did Katana know that a fibroid had been growing in her uterus, undetected for years. The fibroid, which was as big as a scalpel, was the underlying issue to her pelvic pain and miscarriages.

During Katana’s fibroid surgery in 2024, the doctors found that a baby had passed away in her womb due to the fibroid being so big. Her doctors continued to monitor her HCG levels after the procedure, but to everyone’s dilemma, the levels kept rising. Katana had miscarried the baby, but her HCG levels weren’t plummeting as they were supposed to. 

Katana’s follow-up appointment led to a beautiful surprise.

“At the time, I had no idea I was actually pregnant with twins … This second baby, which I had no idea about, was hidden behind the fibroid,” Katana explains. “I went in for my routine check-ups. While everything else shifted back to where it was supposed to be, come to find out she was still in there. She was just very small and had no room to grow because of the other baby, plus the fibroid.”

Katana’s daughter, Alora.

Katana and her husband didn’t plan to get pregnant after her fifth miscarriage in March 2024. They wanted to focus on healing and recovering from their grief while cherishing their time with their daughter, Alora, who was barely 2 years old at the time.

“In March [2024] is when I had gotten pregnant, but when I lost the baby is when we were kind of like, let’s take a step back and focus on Alora and getting over what had happened because it was really hard. It was my fifth miscarriage at that point. It hit me a little bit harder,” Katana says.

To find out she was unexpectedly pregnant with twins months after her fifth miscarriage came as a shock for Katana. She wrestled with many questions about her health after receiving the news of her unplanned pregnancy.

“It was scary. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t know if it had hurt me at the time. We didn’t know if the pregnancy was going to cause me to lose my fallopian tube or my left ovary. Even at that point, they didn’t know what was going to happen, and it was kind of like a guessing game for everyone at that point,” Katana explains.

Despite all the uncertainties, Katana and her husband moved forward with the pregnancy, hoping and praying for the best outcome for their baby girl, who is due in May 2025. 

Her doctor had concerns about the baby’s heart, since the fibroid didn’t give the baby enough space to grow. But by the grace of God, their baby’s heart is strong. Their baby is growing healthily and is projected to weigh at least 10 lbs during birth.

Katana’s encouragement to those facing an unplanned pregnancy:

“Just keep going. It’s hard at first. It’s really hard in the newborn stage, and being a new mom, in general, is hard. I won’t lie — it’s hard, but it does get better. They get older, their personalities come out, and then they become like your own little mini-me.”