Campaign Story

How it Started…

Anyone who has spent any meaningful amount of time with Dan and me in recent years knows the tremendous effort we’ve put towards becoming parents. We found each other later in life, under both unconventional and inconvenient circumstances. At the time, I was burnt out by the Bay Area dating scene and had largely given up on the idea of starting a family with a life partner. While I couldn’t see my future with anyone I had met before that point, I could see my future as a mom as clear as day. I knew it would be a difficult pursuit on my own, but luckily, I had an expansive and supportive community around me that helped me believe I could handle this dream.

Dan, on the other hand, was newly out of a tumultuous two-decade relationship and focused on tending to his emotional recovery and building a new, independent life for himself. After spending his entire adult life with one person, he set out to examine what he wanted his story to be going forward. Up to that point, being a dad wasn’t an option available to him, but now that Dan was starting again, he could think about the future he wanted. 

We met at a party and immediately hit it off, quickly becoming the close friends we both needed at the time. We would talk for hours every day about the difficult and painful experiences we had both recently been through, but we also gushed over all the things that made us hopeful for the future. A few months into our relationship, we knew we wanted to build a life and a family together. Neither of us expected to become so deeply enamored with someone at this stage of life, but for both of us it felt like the first time in a long time that life just made sense.

So we set out to create our future. Two years into our relationship, Dan proposed to me at an annual camping festival we helped to organize. A month later, we were married in a creative (and hilarious) Burning Man ceremony, surrounded by beautiful art, nature, and an intimate group of caring friends. We were thrilled to be together and ready to start trying for a family right away. The only hitch: Dan had an unfortunately complicated vasectomy years before we met. Reversal wasn’t a viable option, but still, we held out hope.

How it’s Going…

Thankfully, I had the opportunity to freeze my eggs years before (thanks, tech sector benefits!). At the time, I had just been diagnosed with a rare connective tissue disorder that my doctors believed was already impacting my fertility, so it became a priority for me to aim for as many options as I could. After three aggressive, back-to-back rounds of egg freezing, I had over 30 eggs preserved. I wasn’t sure if I would ever need to use them, but when the time came, I was endlessly grateful.

Dan and I, with the help of our brilliant team of doctors and specialists, were ultimately able to store 12 healthy embryos. Statistically, black women have a better chance of a healthy birth if embryos are frozen first, so we opted to hold off just a few months before getting started with the next steps.

That act of optimism, however, came with a new challenge for our family planning. My health started failing in new and confusing ways. While my connective tissue disorder had been well-managed up to that point, all of a sudden, I was in constant pain. I struggled to stay awake most days and found myself battling some type of virus, infection, or debilitating injury every other month. From shingles to strep to ligament tears, my body was freaking out all at once, and no one could explain why.

To make matters worse, the foundation where I worked, conducting research and building educational tech tools for underserved students, was experiencing the strain of a rough economic climate. Like so many others in EdTech, most of my team was laid off. As I frantically began job hunting, my health continued to decline. By the time I secured a new job offer, I could barely get out of bed most days, let alone show up to work. I declined the offer, and we made the soul-crushing decision to push back our family plans so I could focus on getting back in shape. Dan stepped in as an amazing caregiver, while figuring out my health became my full-time job. As agonizing as this time was, we were still determined to be parents eventually. We had hearts full of promise… and no idea how much that detour would set us back.

It took nearly two years of tests and procedures, prodding and pain, but I was finally diagnosed with fibromyalgia, opening up a world of possibilities for care. Although the thought of having an incurable autoimmune disorder was horrifying, I at last had a new treatment plan, and I was getting stronger by the day. All we needed now was for me to find a stable new job, and we would be ready to get back to baby-making!

Of course, now I’m contending with a rocky job market and a two-year gap on my résumé (not to mention being nearly 40 years old). After years of putting it off because of my health, we’re now facing the heartbreaking possibility of giving up on children altogether because of the financial cost.

The Ask…

We did all the things to set us up for success: fertility acupuncture, egg freezing, sperm extraction, fertility diets, and more. We invested every bit of energy we have, and roughly $25,000, to get this far, but now we need help. As I figure out the next chapter of my career, we’re holding out a little more hope that our community will be able to help us get over the financial hurdle of embryo transfers.

We’re fundraising to support at least one round of IVF embryo transfers before I age out of the opportunity to try altogether. While we have enough saved up to welcome a new baby, without a two-income household right now, we’re unable to afford the actual “getting pregnant” part, since each attempt at implanting an embryo will cost us about $8500. The odds of the procedure working the first time are low, but we’re working diligently to have the funds to do it on our own if we need to try a second or third round. Using this platform, GiftofParenthood, we’re also able to enter into a drawing for an IVF grant.

It’s been a long, winding, and scary road to get this far. The one constant, though, has been the hope that Dan and I share. We’ve spent years reflecting on our goals to become parents and dreaming of the day when we get to raise a child in the warm embrace of our incredible friends and family. That boundless optimism and caring community have been critical in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable challenges we’ve navigated recently. We’ve faced down the most difficult times of our lives, surviving on the love, support, and faith all around us. Now, what we want more than anything is to share that life with a child of our own.