Fabi Powell: Tennessee woman shares IVF journey as she tries to have baby with late husband's frozen sperm
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: A brave widow whose husband died just one month after their wedding opened up about her struggle with in vitro fertilization (IVF) as she tries to conceive a baby in order to fulfill his dying wish. Fabi Powell, 35, started her IVF journey with her late husband Josh's frozen sperm in early 2021, four years after his death.
California native Fabi was visiting friends in Nashville, Tennessee, when she met her late husband, Josh, at a bar in 2014. They soon hit it off but their love story was interrupted by a tragic situation. Two months after their meeting, Josh was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that affects the tissue around the joints, muscles, and ligaments.
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"We were falling madly in love with each other, and then cancer just kind of came into our world," she said during an interview that aired on the Today show on Tuesday, November 29. "He was a fighter and somebody who saw cancer as a bump in the road."
However, Fabi moved to Nashville to support Josh as he battled cancer. "What this cancer diagnosis was able to do is bless us with this beautiful full perspective that life is short and to not sweat the small stuff," she told Today. "We tried to pack our lives and our days with as much living as we possibly could when he did feel well."
In the spring of 2016, Josh proposed to Fabi during a trip to the beach a few days later and planned to get married the following year in May 2017. Shortly after their engagement, they were made known that Josh's cancer metastasized to his lungs and chemotherapy did not slow the growth. The couple then began to have difficult conversations about their future and that was when Josh told Fabi he had frozen his sperm a few years ago before he started his treatments. "He said, 'How cool would it be to have a little piece of me live on forever and you would be the best mom,"' she said, adding, "He intentionally planted the seed…it was the only time in our relationship that we talked about him possibly not being here."
The couple then got married on November 12, 2016, but 31 days after Josh died on December 13, 2016. Fabi grieved her loss and did not rush herself into any decisions. It was only after years and during the COVID-19 pandemic that she decided to move forward with fertility treatments. She began her IVF journey in 2021 and started to document her experience on Instagram. Fabi opted to have their embryos genetically tested to make sure they didn't have the BRCA2 gene mutation that Josh and his mother carried, which increases the likelihood of cancer, reported the source.
She had two egg retrievals and embryo transfers that failed at the first clinic she went to but did not lose hope and kept trying. Over the past two years, she has undergone five rounds of IVF. Fabi has been emotionally, physically, and financially drained in the process but still has a candid approach. After having three eggs retrieved at a new clinic, she has one viable embryo to transfer when she is ready to try again. She reportedly told the source, "I know this baby is supposed to be here and because I feel so strongly about that. That’s what gives me the energy and the courage and the strength to keep fighting."