Motherhood after Cancer
- Professional dance Marisa Merliss has revealed she’s “transitioning into thriving mode” after welcoming her “rainbow baby” via surrogate after battling cancer and experiencing a tragic pregnancy loss. A rainbow baby is “a healthy baby born after losing a baby due to miscarriage, infant loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death,” the American Pregnancy Association explains.
- Sarcomas are cancers that arise from the cells that hold the body together. They can occur in muscles, nerves, bones, fat, tendons, cartilage or other forms of connective tissues.
- A synovial sarcoma, the cancer Marisa Merliss battled, is a rare cancer that can come from different types of soft tissue, such as muscle or ligaments. This type of sarcoma accounts for 5% to 10% of soft-tissue tumors.
Professional dancer, fitness guru, and nurse Marisa Merliss is "transitioning into thriving mode" after welcoming her "rainbow baby" via surrogate following a cancer battle and enduring a tragic pregnancy loss. According to the
American Pregnancy Association , a rainbow baby is "a healthy baby born after losing a baby due to miscarriage, infant loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death." They are "considered 'miracle' babies due to the powerful impact they can have on helping parents heal after a loss. Merliss, who had a stillbirth at 40 weeks and was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma just four weeks later, has been incredibly resilient throughout the past four years, and now she's sharing her encouraging story—proving that there is life and love to be found after hardship.
Recounting her and her husband Michael Minarik's painful loss and unexpected cancer journey to
People in a recent interview, Merliss said, "After a full-term, healthy pregnancy, we had a stillbirth at 40 weeks [in 2020].” However, during a June 2020 beach getaway in New Jersey to help them grieve, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, Merliss noticed an unusual lump on her thigh. Her husband explained, "There was a croquet, ball-sized lump in her leg and it was huge. And she's like, what's this? And I thought, oh my God. So two weeks to the day that we lost our daughter, we were back in the hospital overnight.” Looking back on how she underwent testing in the hospital before getting diagnosed, Merliss said, "It sounded outlandish that I could potentially have a cancerous tumor after what we had just gone through. I think the traumatic birth and the increased inflammation from all the trauma and emotionally and physically, the tumor filled up with fluid." Two days after her hospital visit and "four weeks to the day" after they lost their daughter, Merliss went to Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City and was diagnosed with synovial sarcoma and needed chemo promptly. Merliss was given a chance to "harvest eggs" before starting four rounds of aggressive chemo two weeks later. However, her cousin Amanda Schulte, a mom of three, ultimately offered to be a surrogate.
Merliss' surrogate and the joy of having a baby was the perfect motivation to help her fight cancer, and her "rainbow baby" Maya was born on July 13, 2023. Now Merliss insists on living life to the fullest despite having been through adversity, telling People, "I was in survival mode for a long time, and now I’m enjoying transitioning into thriving mode. "Sometimes it’s day to day, or week to week, reminding myself we are now living the life we hoped and dreamed of and embracing that while still honoring the past." Her determination to move forward and make the best of life was also seen in one of her earlier Instagram posts, featuring a photo of her with no hair amid battling sarcoma. She
captioned the October 2020 post , "'Better than yesterday,' this has been my motto for the past week+ since I was in the hospital for 4 long days. My experience of dealing with cancer and the loss of our daughter over the past 4+ months has taught me to live in the moment like nothing else has. When I don’t, I tend to get scared lonely and depressed. Merliss concluded the post: "Whatever you are experiencing today, just remember this is a moment in time. This is something my husband I remind each other of often. Breathe through it, there are still moments of joy to be found, cry, vent, do whatever you need to and keep forging ahead. "I’m so grateful for TODAY, which is better than yesterday!"
And on the birth of their daughter Maya, Merliss commemorated the miraculous day with a heartwarming photo of her and her husband with their newborn in their arms. "We have our precious girl in our arms thanks to our super hero, my amazing, strong and generous cousin, @amandalschulte . 3 years ago from Maya’s birth date, on the day I was diagnosed with cancer (4 weeks after we lost our Angel She-ra in the delivery room) Amanda called from Kansas City and made an unsolicited offer to be 'our oven' if we wanted to have another baby," Merliss wrote. "This incredibly thoughtful and selfless act will blow my mind and fill our hearts with love forever and always. She baked our 'Baby Lasagna' to perfection and we’ve become so much closer as a family."
Cancer Treatment's Impact on Fertility in Women
It's important to understand that cancer treatment can impact both men and women's fertility. For women, some types of chemotherapy can destroy eggs. This can make it impossible or difficult to get pregnant later. Whether or not chemotherapy makes you infertile depends on the type of drug and your age since your egg supply decreases with age.
Dr. Terri Woodard explains fertility preservation options patients have when going through cancer treatment. “The risk is greater the older you are,” reproductive endocrinologist
Dr. Jaime Knopman , told SurvivorNet in an earlier interview. “If you’re 39 and you get chemo that’s toxic to the ovaries, it’s most likely to make you menopausal. But, if you’re 29, your ovaries may recover because they have a higher baseline supply,” Dr. Knopman continued.
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Radiation to the pelvis can also destroy eggs. It can damage the uterus, too. Surgery to your ovaries or uterus can hurt fertility as well. Meanwhile, endocrine or
hormone therapy may block or suppress key fertility hormones and may prevent a woman from getting pregnant. This infertility may be temporary or permanent, depending on the type and length of treatment. If you are having a treatment that includes infertility as a possible side effect, your doctor won’t be able to tell you for sure whether you will have this side effect. That’s why you should discuss your options for fertility preservation before starting treatment.
Research shows that women who have fertility preserved before breast cancer treatment are more than twice as likely to give birth after treatment than those who don’t take fertility-preserving measures. Most women who preserve their fertility before cancer treatment do so by freezing their eggs or embryos.
WATCH: Resilience: Staying Positive Despite Adversity After you finish your
cancer treatment , a doctor who specializes in reproductive medicine can implant one or more embryos in your uterus or the uterus of a surrogate with the hope that it will result in pregnancy. If you freeze eggs only before treatment, a fertility specialist can use sperm and your eggs to create embryos in vitro and transfer them to your uterus. When freezing eggs or embryos is not an option, doctors may try these approaches:
- Ovarian tissue freezing is an experimental approach for girls who haven’t yet reached puberty and don’t have mature eggs or for women who must begin treatment right away and don’t have time to harvest eggs.
- Ovarian suppression prevents the eggs from maturing so that they cannot be damaged during treatment.
- Ovarian transposition, for women getting radiation to the pelvis, moves the ovaries out of the line of treatment.
Responding to Stress: How to Cope With Complex & Changing Emotions In addition to preserving eggs or embryos, positive research has shown that women with early-stage hormone-receptor (HR) positive breast cancer were able to safely pause endocrine therapy (ET) to try to get pregnant and they did not have worse short-term recurrence rates than people who did not stop endocrine therapy.
Surrogacy and Gestational Carriers
In some cases after battling a health condition or undergoing cancer treatment, women may have difficulty giving birth to a child or they may be unable to at all. Having someone else carry their baby may be an option, either through surrogacy or a gestational carrier. According to the
National Cancer Institute, a surrogate pregnancy is “a type of pregnancy in which a woman carries and gives birth to a baby for a person who is not able to have children.” “In a surrogate pregnancy, eggs from the woman who will carry the baby or from an egg donor are fertilized with sperm from a sperm donor to make an embryo,” the institute explains. “The embryo is implanted in the uterus of the surrogate mother, who carries the baby until birth. Surrogate pregnancy may be an option for men or women who want to have children and have had certain anticancer treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, that can cause infertility.” As for a
gestational carrier, the institute describes this person as a “woman who carries and gives birth to a baby for a person who is not able to have children.” “Eggs from an egg donor are fertilized in the laboratory with sperm from a sperm donor to make an embryo,” the institute explains. “The embryo is implanted in the uterus of the gestational surrogate, who carries the baby until birth. The gestational surrogate (or carrier) is not genetically related to the baby and is not the biological mother.” If you or someone you know is deciding on whether or not to go the route of surrogacy or gestational carrier, it’s important to know that each state has different laws and it may be necessary to speak with an attorney before moving forward.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
If you’re wondering how your cancer treatment may affect your fertility and what options are available to you, the National Cancer Institute recommends asking your doctor these questions:
- Could my treatment lead to infertility?
- Are there other treatments that might not cause fertility problems?
- Which fertility preservation options would you advise for me?
- What fertility preservation options are available at this hospital? At a fertility clinic?
- Would you recommend a fertility specialist (such as a reproductive endocrinologist) that I could talk with to learn more?
- What are the chances that my fertility will return after treatment?
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff 
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