Two years take Kila couple from terrified to overjoyed
<p>Sophia Sonoda was five weeks old on Tuesday, November 29.</p>
<p>Sherrie Sonoda holds her daughter Sophia on a recent morning at her home in Kila. In the background, proud father Steve Sonoda looks on. Sophia, shown at top in Sherrie’s hands, was five weeks old Nov. 29. The Sonodas, who had given up on the idea of being parents, adopted Sophia in late October.</p>
<p>Steve Sonoda looks down at his daughter, Sophia, as he feeds her a bottle on a recent morning at his home in Kila. Sherrie Sonoda says Sophia “will be Daddy’s little girl.”</p>
Steve Sonoda, 57, cuddles newborn Sophia Grace gently in his strong arms as his wife, Sherrie, 47, smiles down at the two of them nestled on the couch with their dog, Kane. Sophia’s eyes lock lovingly at his face.
“She’ll be Daddy’s little girl,” Sherrie said with a laugh. “He calls her Binky.”
The Kila family recently celebrated Thanksgiving with more blessings than either ever imagined. On the same holiday two years ago, the couple wondered how many more they might have together.
Sherrie remembers the first life-changing call that came the Tuesday before that Thanksgiving.
She and Steve had put their holiday dinner groceries on the kitchen floor to answer the telephone. It was radiologist Dr. Debra Accord and Sandy Shaw, cancer patient navigator, informing her that her breast biopsy was positive for a cancer called invasive ductal carcinoma.
Steve and Sherrie cried together, and then finally put their groceries away. Sherrie then began notifying loved ones in Utah using those three terrifying words: “I have cancer.”
“That was a hard thing to say,” she said.
Before moving the Flathead Valley seven years ago, the couple lived in Salt Lake City, where Steve had a career as a mechanic with FedEx. After relocating here, Sherrie worked at several jobs before becoming a title clerk with the Department of Motor Vehicles in Kalispell.
She recalled that she went for a checkup a little over two years ago just to have a prescription refilled. It was Nov. 9 when Sheila Shipiro, a nurse practitioner at Flathead City-County Health Department, found the lump in her breast.
“I was just shocked,” Sherrie said. “I couldn’t feel it. She said it was a little over 2 centimeters.”
A follow-up mammogram led to an ultrasound and then a biopsy on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Sherrie said she was convinced the tumor was benign before the call that Tuesday.
“Everyone said 99 percent of them are benign — you’ll be fine,” she said.
Sherrie and Steve decided that she needed to go to a facility in Salt Lake City and made all the arrangements. Then they met with local breast surgeon Dr. Melissa Hulvat.
“We just fell in love with her and said, ‘We’re staying here,’” Sherrie said. “I had thought that this is a small town and there’s no way they can handle this. Boy, was I wrong.”
Because her tumor was a slow-growing variety, Sherrie waited until Jan. 6 so that Hulvat could operate in coordination with Dr. Sarah Nargi, a plastic surgeon, performing the reconstruction from her double mastectomy.
Starting in February, Sherrie took four rounds of chemotherapy, three weeks apart, guided by her oncologist, Dr. Michael Goodman. She said she never understood what people meant when they spoke of battling cancer until she experienced chemo.
“You’re battling these demons in you,” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s an emotional roller coaster.”
She managed to work during her therapy thanks to steroids, anti-nausea medication and the understanding of her fellow workers at the DMV. Sherrie worked in the back during that time and missed a few days when the steroids wore off a few days after her infusions.
“Someone would just look at me the wrong way and I would be crying,” she said.
Sherrie still attends a regular schedule of checkups with her oncologist since completing her treatments. She has blood taken for tests to make sure the cancer has not returned.
A new baby was the last thing that she and Steve were thinking about. They had long since decided that wasn’t a possibility for them when the phone rang last summer.
“We got a call from Steve’s sister Lynda,” Sherrie recalled. “Her friend’s daughter was pregnant and didn’t want the baby. She was 28 and single with two other children.”
The mother, who wants to remain anonymous, knew that Sherrie and Steve had always wanted a child. In a heart-breaking event 11 years ago, Sherrie had gotten pregnant, and then miscarried.
When Lynda asked if they were still interested in a baby, Sherrie said her first reaction was that they were too old. Steve asked her to think about it, so she did.
“I thought about it for about 10 seconds,” she said with a laugh. “Then I realized that this was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
The couple wanted to make certain that the mother knew their ages and that she had gone through cancer treatment. Sherrie still worried, but finally was reassured after speaking with the mother, who said she was not going to change her mind.
The mother wanted a closed adoption (no information disclosed) and asked that Sherrie and Steve not attend the birth Oct. 25. Instead, Steve’s sister attended, and then flew to Montana with the 7 pound, 4 ounce baby girl Oct. 26.
Photos recorded the joyous meeting at the Missoula airport of Steve and Sherrie and their newborn daughter, Sophia Grace. Sherrie remembers how nervous she was as she waited.
“Steve said he thought I was going to have a heart attack,” she said with a laugh. “Seeing her that first time was so emotional.”
Sherrie says that this adoption was “so meant to be.” She became convinced after an incident when she was searching to find some fabric she had purchased and made an amazing discovery.
“I came across a pink diaper bag with a complete quilt,” she said. “Growing up Mormon, my mother had made one for all her kids. I was sure I had gotten rid of all that stuff. It’s so incredible to think that my mother knew before she died that I would be the mother to a little girl.”
Sherrie took five weeks off to get used to motherhood before returning to work Dec. 1. Steve became the stay-at-home dad.
He said he often cared for his younger brother, so feeding and changing the baby came back to him.
“It’s like riding a bicycle,” he said.
Sherrie said Sophia has been a very good baby who only cries when she wants food or changing. She said Steve’s sister Lynda gave them the best advice.
“She said, ‘You have to feed her, burp her, change her and Sophia will do the rest,’” Sherrie said. “Those have been words to live by.”
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.