Campaign Story

It’s been a long and interesting road…

We met in high school in 2009 and began dating soon after. After graduation, we moved to Terre Haute where we both attended Indiana State University.

We received our degrees, and got married in 2017. We had our house, we settled in, our careers were steadily in motion, and we decided in 2021 that we wanted to begin our family.

In June of 2021, we got our first positive pregnancy test with a March due date. We were excited, overwhelmed, but most of all, felt a kind of love and comfort we’d never felt before. Everything seemed to fall into place and we couldn’t stand holding our excitement for our little surprise, but we wanted to wait to break the news to our families until we were past the 12-week mark.

At 10 weeks we went in for a viability scan. That was when we were crushed with the news that we had lost our baby. It shook us to our cores and brought the worst pain either of us had experienced.

After some testing and time, we were informed that there was no obvious reason for what happened. The doctor classified it as a “missed miscarriage” as I still had all the symptoms of pregnancy. We were devastated and took a few months to recover and decided to try again.

Six months passed and we were still not pregnant, so we met with my OBGYN to find out what was wrong.

We did testing and there was no medical reason for our infertility. Our doctor recommended Clomid to assist with the pregnancy which I did three rounds of, but still no pregnancy. After over a year of trying, we were recommend to take the next step with Dr. Henry Fertility in Indianapolis.

Dr. Henry confirmed our fears when we were simply diagnosed with Unexplained Infertility. With this diagnosis, we only have a 3% success rate of natural pregnancy.

But we didn’t give up hope. Dr. Henry provided us with additional treatments and kept us optimistic that there was still potential for us to have a family.

With the direction of Dr. Henry, we did our first IUI cycle in August 2022. Though I responded well to the medications, it was unsuccessful and we did a second round in October 2022, which was also unsuccessful. After weighing our options, we decided to pursue IVF.

With the repeated ups and downs, we felt it was best to take a break from treatment and try to have a normal Christmas and New Year. We would try again in February 2023.

We were surprised on December 18th when I took a precautionary pregnancy test and it was positive. We were again ecstatic and were looking at an August due date. My bloodwork was initially a bit concerning, but almost instantly rose to perfect levels.

Things just felt right and we decided to tell our families as they had been with us throughout our struggle. On Christmas Day, we broke the news to everyone that we were pregnant.

But, again, the day after Christmas, we lost this pregnancy. Thankfully, we had family and support to help us through our heartbreak.

After recovering physically, we began the process of IVF. This is where we are currently.

While initially deciding to do a fresh transfer, I experienced Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation syndrome as a result of the medications.  Because of this, we did a frozen transfer that, while more successful, unfortunately, is more costly and postponed our transfer.

In May of this year, we received the news that the transfer resulted in a positive pregnancy and we will meet our rainbow baby in January 2024!

Though we were blessed with this good news, we learned along the way that the financial burden of IVF is a difficult one. Additionally, most insurance does not cover infertility treatments. We found this out the hard way after 2022 left us with over $10,000.00 in medical spending out-of-pocket just for the two IUI cycles. Our current IVF cycle has cost us almost $20,000.00, which we are covering with a personal loan. The addition of a frozen transfer increases that by about $5,000.00.

And that’s why we’re here.

We are here reaching out to you, asking for help in growing our family so that we can bring our child into a stable household.

We’re doing this through a fundraiser.

This fundraiser is a bit different than any we’ve seen in the past. It’s called a puzzle fundraiser and how it works is we have a 1,000 piece puzzle, and each donation will be designated with a corresponding piece until we reach our goal of $25,000.

Once you make a donation, your name will be written on the back of that piece. And once the puzzle is built, we will reveal the finished image, frame it, and it will be hung in our nursery to forever commemorate the love and support of you all who have helped us to build our family.

It’s not easy for us to ask for this help, and we want to thank you all for supporting us and being willing to help us with this journey. It has truly been exhausting and devastating in every sense of the word, but the faith, love and support we have gotten from family, friends, and community has helped us to survive.

Thank you all so much.