One night during her pregnancy with Nokomis, Lymarie Jimenez had a dream of a 3-year-old girl with dark curls in a messy bun, painting and giggling. When she woke up, she turned to her husband, Darren Nelson, and said, “I think I just saw our daughter.” Nearly two years prior, the couple had met with a fertility doctor after four years of trying for a child. Lymarie, then 36, was considered to be of advanced maternal age for pregnancy, and tests determined Darren had signs of increased infertility. When her doctor suggested in vitro fertilization (IVF), where an egg is fertilized outside of the body and implanted in the uterus, the pair was pragmatic about the outcome. “We said, ‘We’re going to do this once,’” she says. They didn’t want to mortgage the house or take out loans for multiple cycles and were prepared to walk away without ever having kids. The road forward included a hysteroscopy to examine the inside of the womb, countless appointments during the height of COVID-19 (so Lymarie was mostly on her own), and multiple injections a day for months. Throughout this time, Lymarie hardly told anyone what she was going through, meanwhile fielding questions about when she would have kids. “You’re literally dying on the inside [and thinking], ‘If only you knew how hard I’m trying,’” she says. She leaned on her husband while bottling her feelings from others. “We’ve been conditioned as women to not want to disappoint people; we’re people pleasers,” she says. “That’s part of the reason I think a lot of people keep it on the inside.” In early 2020, Lymarie’s doctor scheduled her egg retrieval—only one of six survived, and it took Lymarie’s body seven months to be ready for insemination. After the procedure, she felt like she was in limbo. “The world stops for two weeks,” she says. “No more doctor’s appointments, no more ultrasounds, no more lab draws, no more anything. It just stops.” The Estero couple discovered Lymarie was pregnant the Monday after the 4th of July weekend. The news brought happy tears and anxious thoughts. Still, Lymarie says her baby was good to her during her pregnancy. She gave birth to Nokomis Victoria Jimenez on March 8, 2021—International Women’s Day. The mother’s candle-making company, Nokomis Home Fragrance, was inspired by her daughter. Lymarie is now vocal about her fertility journey and has used proceeds from her candles to help other parents pursuing IVF. “[I want women] to know that there are many, many other women suffering, too, so they don’t feel alone,” Lymarie says. Nokomis, now 2, looks almost exactly like the girl Lymarie remembers from her dream. As she raises her daughter, she hopes her child finds her place in the world. “I want her to be her, whatever that means.”—A.P.
38 — G U L F S H O R E L I F E
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Styled by Anna Ruiz
Lymarie Jimenez