A widow gave birth to her dead husband’s baby 14 months after his death by using frozen embryos. She says her new son has “healed her heart.”

Sarah Shellenberger, 40, described eight-week-old Hayes as her “medicine” after she lost her husband Scott, 41, to a heart attack last February.

Sarah now hopes to have another baby using the same process with their second and last viable embryo.

Sarah is a teacher from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. “Holding Hayes has been such good medicine for me and he has healed my heart in a lot of ways,” she said.

Sarah and Scott had just completed an embryo fertilization at a Barbados fertility clinic when Scott, a science professor, died suddenly while teaching a class at college. Sarah was convinced Scott would have wanted her to give birth to the baby. She fell pregnant with Hayes last August, six months after Scott’s death.

“In our eyes, we have these two embryos that are already created and they are our children. To me, there was no other option. They are our kids,” Sarah said.

Sarah and Scott first met while studying at Southern Nazarene University. But the two only began dating when Scott contacted Sarah on Facebook in 2017.

The couple got engaged four months after reuniting in person. They married in September 2018. They immediately began trying for children.

“Both of us really wanted at least three kids and we were really excited to start our family,” Sarah said.

But they struggled to conceive and finally their doctor told them that their only hope of becoming parents was with IVF.

Because of the high cost for IVF in the United States, the couple went to the Barbados Fertility Center for the egg retrieval. The first retrieval was in December 2019.

“For the first round, we ended up getting one genetically normal embryo and that turned out to be Hayes,” Sarah said. “We found out just before Christmas that he was a boy.”

“Scott and I were able to pick out names before he died and that was really meaningful. We decided to go back in February for another retrieval while I still had as many eggs as possible.”

Scott was unable to accompany Sarah on the trip because he had limited holiday time, so her mother Sherry, 64, went with her.

Scott suffered a fatal heart attack as Sarah and Sherry flew back to Oklahoma, via Toronto.

“When I landed in Toronto and I finally connected to the WiFi my phone was going crazy,” Sarah said.

“I had all these text messages coming through – the first one I saw was from one of Scott’s co-workers telling me that they were all gathered here praying for Scott.”

“I called his mom and she told me that he had had a heart attack and been moved to the ICU and he had not regained consciousness.” But Sarah couldn’t believe that her young and healthy husband could possibly die of a heart attack.

“I was upset and concerned but I really didn’t think he would die,” she said. “He was so healthy, fit and young.”

She arrived at the hospital and saw Scott hooked up to a life support machine. A neurologist told her that her husband was brain dead.

“I couldn’t believe it. There are no words to describe that feeling. I decided I wanted to donate his organs so I filled out all the paperwork,” Sarah said.

“On Friday, February 21 I had to go and say goodbye to him. That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she added.

Scott donated his liver and kidneys, saving the lives of three people. A week after his funeral, the clinic told Sarah that she had one more viable embryo.