Brittany Fair is feeling richly blessed this Mother’s Day.
“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.
Deborah Laverty is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
