Amy Taylor Parker always dreamed of having a house full of happy kids, even as she dealt with lifelong health issues regarding her thyroid.

“I knew at one point that infertility might be there,” Parker said.

When she married her husband, Patrick, 33 years ago, they began trying to get pregnant, to no avail.

Parker tried every treatment and procedure to advance her dream of having a baby, but due to her thyroid issues, nothing worked.

“Finally, the doctor said to me ‘I don’t want to break your heart, but don't ever plan on having children,’” she recalled. “Unbeknownst to the doctor or me, I was pregnant when he said that.”

The Parkers — who had no idea they were expecting — took a trip to visit Patrick’s sister and brother-in-law near Cincinnati, and the couples decided to visit King’s Island Amusement Park.

A lover of roller coasters and other rides many would find terrifying, Parker hopped on the biggest coaster in the park, followed by other gut-wrenching rides.

“I kept getting sick, and I remember saying ‘No wonder they have those signs that say ‘Pregnant women should not ride,’” Parker said. “In my mind, I can’t be pregnant.”

Two weeks later, Parker had her first inkling that something was different, reproductively.

“At 6 a.m. on a Sunday, I woke my husband up, screaming ‘You’ve got to look at this,’” Parker said. “I said ‘Don’t tell anyone. I’m going to take a second test tomorrow.’”

Sure enough, the second at-home pregnancy test the next morning displayed the same results.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Parker said. “After six years of trying, I’m going to have a baby.”

Considering her thyroid issues, the pregnancy progressed fairly well in the beginning, without the need for thyroid treatment in the face of such significant changes in her body.

Doctors did tell Parker that given her thyroid function, she was a major candidate for preeclampsia, which is a serious complication of pregnancy mainly characterized by high blood pressure in the mother.

If not managed properly, the condition can be fatal.

Parker, who worked at the former ServiceStar in East Butler at the time, did eventually receive a diagnosis of borderline preeclampsia.

With four weeks left to go until she was scheduled to go on maternity leave, the doctor told Parker she needed total rest.

But Parker was an organizer of the company Christmas party.

“I couldn’t not do anything,” she said.

So the doctor told her she could go to work, but had to come home and lay down for the rest of the evening and night until she got up for work the next day.

Not one to be still, Parker tried to take it easy, but still did laundry and dishes in the evenings.

“It was hard, because it was over the holidays,” she said.

When she started feeling ill, the doctor ordered an emergency sonogram.

Her mother, Bobbie Taylor, accompanied her daughter during the test.

“When they brought the sonogram up on the big TV, Mom started crying and said ‘I can see your baby,’” Parker recalled.

Although the baby was fully formed, the Parkers decided not to ask its gender.

“I thought, God will unwrap that gift and tell us when the baby is born,” Parker said.

The gender wasn’t the only thing kept a secret during Parker’s pregnancy.

“We didn’t tell anyone the baby names, because we didn’t want anyone to tell us they were bad names,” she said with a laugh.

When Parker began to get sick at night, she called her doctor.

She was told the staff would squeeze her in for an examination the next day.

After waiting three hours in the doctor’s office, Parker was taken to an exam room.

“The doctor came in and said ‘Where’s you husband? You have preeclampsia, so you’re having the baby tomorrow,’” she said.

Four weeks from her due date, Parker made her way home to share the news with Patrick, her parents, Bobbie Taylor and the late Ernie Taylor, and her sisters.

“I went home and did exactly what my doctor told me not to do,” Parker said. “He said to have a light dinner, but Mom was making sauerkraut, pork and mashed potatoes.”

The next day, the medical staff in the obstetrics department at Butler Memorial Hospital used a special intravenous medication to stimulate labor in Parker, but progress was slow.

She sent Patrick home to get some sleep as nurses administered drugs to keep her blood pressure at a manageable level during labor.

The medicine reduced her blood pressure too much, and the baby was in distress as labor played out.

Taylor stayed with her daughter during the nerve-wracking labor process, although the doctors at that time did not permit anyone but the baby’s father in the room during labor and delivery.

“I had to stay in the closet (when the doctor was in the room),” Taylor recalled. “The nurses put me in there.”

Taylor and Parker were worried, but not hopeless, when the 8-pound, 2-ounce baby boy was born and did not cry on Feb. 14, 1996.

“I know God had a purpose for all this,” Parker said. “And I knew God wasn’t going to take my baby away.”

As soon as the birth took place, nurses swept the baby away for treatment that would keep him alive in the minutes after his birth.

“I could hear him crying, but it was just a little bit of a mewing sound,” Parker recalled. “I never got to hold him until six hours after he was born.”

The baby quickly recovered from the birth, and was named Andre Reese Taylor Parker.

“I said if I’m only going to do this once, he’s getting all the names,” Parker said.“

Since that time, Andre has been nothing but a joy to not only his parents, but his whole family.

“I’m always very grateful and very blessed to know that I have a child who is healthy and smart and a good person all the way around,” Parker said.

Her mother agreed with her assessment of Andre, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in stage and film writing and published a book entitled “Interviewing Granddad.”

“He's just a very good kid,” Taylor said. “He was always, always a good little boy.”

Her grandson traveled from his home in Pittsburgh recently to pick Taylor up and take her to the Karns City Jr./Sr. High School’s seventh-grade concert, which was lead by Taylor’s daughter, Beth Ackleson.

After the concert, the two enjoyed pizza for dinner and stopped at a restaurant in Butler on the way home to have dessert with Ackleson and talk about the concert.

When the family patriarch, Ernie Taylor, died recently, Parker was proud to hear visitors to the funeral home declare that Andre resembled Ernie.

Bobbie Taylor said her late husband fussed over all his four daughters, helping them with any task, including those normally reserved for a mother.

“The best mother in the world was Ernie Taylor,” Bobbie said. “He loved babies, and he loved helping the girls with their kids.”

Parker said she hopes her story inspires young women to not give up on their dream of having a baby.

“Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said. “There’s always hope.”

Thinking back on her odyssey to get pregnant and deliver a healthy baby, she said she can’t imagine her life without her “miracle baby.”

“Both his dad and I are very proud of him,” Parker said. “He’s our world.”