After many trials, heartbreak, the miracle of birth
“The last round was the most heartbreaking,” she says, “with eight eggs that all fertilized, but none of them resulted in viable embryos.”
THE PARENTS: Jeanna Cooper, 41, and Bradley Cooper, 37, of Fishtown
THE CHILD: Nolan Daniel, born Aug. 30, 2020
HIS NAME: The N in “Nolan” is for Bradley’s father, Neil. His middle name honors several of Jeanna’s family members along with the male couple whose help was essential to their parenthood journey; both men have the middle name “Daniel.”
Inscribed in Bradley’s wedding ring are the words, “Because of you, I know true love.” Inside Jeanna’s ring is the motto that’s guided their lives ever since they met before a November Project workout on the Art Museum steps: “Best plans are no plans.”
Two weeks after that meetup — Jeanna remembers a charming runner with a knockout smile who encouraged her to dip lower in her push-ups — they declared themselves “boyfriend and girlfriend.”
About that time, in the car, near Washington Avenue and Columbus Boulevard, they talked frankly about kids. Bradley’s previous partnership had included raising a child — his ex’s daughter was a baby when they started dating, and Bradley remained connected to the girl even after the relationship ended — and he let Jeanna know he’d be open to having children, but also content to remain childless.
Jeanna wanted kids, but knew that her age — she was 36 at the time — meant there was no guarantee. “It felt important to bring up,” she says. “You can’t assume another person wants the same things as you.”
For the time being, their yearnings aligned: a planned trip to Paris to run a half-marathon; an engagement — 7:30 a.m. on the Art Museum steps — in front of 150 November Project runners. Bradley had bought bubble guns; someone snapped a photo of Jeanna gasping, hands clapped to her mouth, with Bradley on one knee.
They set a wedding date and secured a venue for November 2017. But when they learned their landlord was planning to sell their rental, they decided — adhering to the “no plans” adage — to look for a house and get married sooner.
In the end, they had two weddings. First was an intimate ceremony on Lemon Hill, the trees in April extravagance, Jeanna in a sleeveless white dress, a few family members in attendance.
They exchanged vows again in November, a wedding that included some Jewish rituals — Bradley was raised Jewish, and Jeanna considers herself “not religious” — 130 guests and a dance floor that rocked for hours. “We really wanted to celebrate with our people,” she says.
They ditched the birth control just after that second wedding. Jeanna had relatives who’d had babies later in life, so she figured conception would come easily. “Every month, I was pretty sure that we were pregnant … and then, we weren’t.”
After six months, she sought information and testing. Fertility specialists advocated IVF, and they tried — once, twice, five times. Bradley is petrified of needles, so Jeanna did all the injections herself. “The last round was the most heartbreaking,” she says, “with eight eggs that all fertilized, but none of them resulted in viable embryos.”
Because Jeanna traveled frequently for her work at a pharmaceutical company, she worked with fertility clinics all over the country — Fort Worth, San Francisco, Boston — to obtain medications and testing no matter where she was. “Physically, it was tough — and emotionally, just heart-wrenching.”
After the final cycle, the two took off for Greece. “I needed to not see the needles. I needed to not see the medicines. We have a four-bedroom house; I needed to not see an empty room,” she says.
They considered their options: Try again with IVF. Pursue adoption. Make peace with being childless. But Jeanna yearned to carry a pregnancy, and she didn’t see adoption as a guarantee. “I was afraid that if we started [the adoption process] and something fell through, it would break me.”
During a July 2019 dinner with good friends — a groomsman from their wedding and his male partner — a fourth option emerged. The men hoped to have children, and a couple they knew had offered them frozen embryos that were left from an IVF cycle; that couple had conceived through IVF, then had a second baby without reproductive intervention.
“[Our friends] had decided that instead of using the embryos themselves, they would offer them to us,” Jeanna recalls. “Our jaws were wide open: Is this real? They wanted to pave our path to parenthood.”
Jeanna and Bradley talked with the other couple, who live in Maine, and worked with a lawyer to draft contracts that allowed them to take ownership of the frozen embryos. The first transfer, in November 2019, didn’t work. They tried again two months later. And on the morning of a scheduled flight to San Diego, Jeanna wept — elated tears, this time.
“I’m pregnant, for the first time in my life. I’m pregnant!” she recalls thinking.
The pregnancy was uneventful — some nausea at first; snug pants at 20 weeks; a sudden pop to “carrying a little beach ball” between five and six months — until near the end, when her shoes no longer fit and her body began to swell.
The due date was Sept. 23. On Aug. 28, Jeanna took her blood pressure at home: 190 over 100. By that afternoon, she was at Pennsylvania Hospital, where she was diagnosed with preeclampsia. Someone quipped, “Mini-Cooper’s coming this weekend.”
He did — after an induction, a dilation that never exceeded four centimeters, and indications that Jeanna’s condition was worsening. Bradley recalls standing in the waiting area before he could enter the operating room, sweating in a T-shirt and jeans, trembling with nerves.
Once inside, a nurse snapped photos and someone asked, “Do you want to meet your baby?”
“I popped my head over, and this boy was being removed from her. All of a sudden it was — boom, boom! — this is happening!”
Jeanna remembers, too: “The feeling of them lifting him out of me. Hearing him cry. He sounded so healthy and vibrant.”
When they look at Nolan, they think of the village that helped create him: the Maine family that includes Nolan’s biological sisters; the couple who passed up the offer of embryos so Jeanna and Bradley could have a baby instead.
“There are little connections and big connections,” Jeanna says. “It’s a family forest, not a family tree.”