Campaign Story

My name is Joshua Kitchens, and I am writing to you in the hopes that you would consider donating to help grow our family. You see, my wife and I are hoping to be able to have another child through the use of IVF and surrogacy due to some complications that arose during my wife’s previous birth. It is my hope that after reading my wife’s and my story below, you will consider us as good candidates for donation.

On the morning of October 15th, 2023, at 1:54 am, our lives were made 1000x better as we welcomed the birth of our baby girl Madelyn, but her birth came with a cost to my wife and me. I remember the night quite vividly. Erin and I were on the couch, and it was still the night of October 14th. Erin had fallen asleep with her head in my lap, and I was finishing watching a terribly boring movie that had put Erin to sleep. As the credits were rolling on the film, Erin sat bolt upright and looked at me with a look that I’ll never forget, and she said that her water just broke. Despite it being 6 weeks early, our little girl was tired of being cooped up and was ready to come out and meet the world.

As Erin and I both collectively panicked since we had yet to install a car seat or pack a hospital bag since we thought we still had more time, we both attempted to do our best to remain calm despite the overwhelming worries and anxiety we now had about Madelyn being born so early. I managed to get the car seat installed while Erin was able to pack a hospital bag. We then left our house and our dogs at home while I drove to try and get us to the hospital as fast as possible.

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurses took my wife and me back to the labor and delivery triage room, where we discovered that our daughter’s head was stuck more or less in my wife’s ribcage and that Erin’s water had indeed broken and that Madelyn was ready to come out. You see, Erin had a bicornuate uterus, which caused Madelyn to basically grow only on one side of her uterus, and Madelyn’s placenta had attached itself on the other side, or horn, as the nursing staff referred to it. The nurses and doctor confirmed that the birth would have to be an emergency cesarean section and that Madelyn would be born prematurely. After this consultation, the nursing staff wheeled us back to the operating room, where they conducted the C-section, delivering our baby girl into the world. Madelyn was born at 18 inches long and 4 lbs and 7 oz., and she maybe spent an hour in the NICU total since she was the toughest and strongest premature baby that you’ll ever see. After the staff let Erin and I hold our Maddie Bear, which is what we nicknamed her, for the first time, we both knew right then and there that this is what God had made us for: to be parents. After I gave Maddie back to the nurses to be taken to the nursery to be cleaned up and monitored, I was asked to leave the OR, and I went around front where mine and Erin’s family were waiting to see Maddie for the first time. As I looked through the glass at my baby girl and saw how she ripped the heart monitor off her chest that the nurse put on to monitor her heart, I had never felt more proud of any accomplishment in my life than being her father, and I have since never felt any more pride than when I see my daughter accomplish something. Graduating from Marine Corps boot camp, graduating from EOD school, one of the hardest schools in the entire Department of Defense, or graduating from the Police Academy—none of those accomplishments can hold a candle to the pride I felt then when she ripped that heart monitor off and the pride I feel in her whenever she does literally anything from blowing a spit bubble to when she said Da Da or Ma Ma for the first time. Nothing will ever compare to the feelings of love and pride that I get when I look at my daughter or how proud I am of her mother for carrying her those long 8 months and for how her mother shouldered and has continued to shoulder so much of the load in caring for and raising our daughter since it seems like I constantly work. I could never have asked God for a better wife or a better mother to my child than Erin. I’m sorry for the aside there; I got a little sidetracked, but I felt as though that was important. Back to the story.

As our relatives and I watched Maddie through the glass, one of the nurses who had been in the OR came and got me and led me back into the OR, where Erin was still lying on the table, and the doctor looked at me and explained to me that Erin had undiagnosed placenta accreta and her placenta had embedded itself so deeply into the horn of her uterus that they could not get it to release and that the placenta was now hemorrhaging and if they did not remove Erin’s uterus, she would die. I looked at the doctor, and I asked him, So you’re saying that we will not have any more children? and he replied, Not traditionally, no. I looked at Erin, and she and I both said to conduct the partial hysterectomy in order to save her life. The nurse then ushered me back out into the hallway outside the OR, where I then sat in a chair beside a cart with towels on it, and I cried. I cried like I never had before—not when my mother died of an overdose when I was 14 did I cry like that, and I’ve never cried like that since. You see, I always had approached having children as a more or less if it happens, it happens, and I will do everything needed of me to be the best father I could be. Erin, on the other hand, it was one of her major life goals, if not the most major one, to be a mother to multiple children and to be the best mother she could be, as she did not have a great mother growing up, and I believed she wished to show that despite that she could break that cycle and be an amazing mother to numerous children as her own mother had been a terrible mother to Erin and her three sisters, and now she had lost the choice to have any more children biologically and to be pregnant again.

I was furious at life, the universe, God, or whatever had let this travesty, as I saw it at the time, occur to my beautiful Erin. I could not believe that so many terrible people get to have all the babies they could ever want, and my Erin couldn’t anymore due to an oversight of a condition that should have been seen and prepared for months in advance. I couldn’t believe it. I was also despondent for Erin, crying my eyes out and grieving for her loss. Simultaneously, I was the happiest man on earth at the same time and thanking God so much for him letting my baby girl Maddie be delivered with no health issues despite being 6 weeks early. Needless to say, it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Eventually the nurses came and got me. They let me know that Erin was now recovering in the recovery room and was starting to come back around from the anesthesia.

After being brought in to see Erin, the nurses eventually brought Maddie into the recovery room, where Erin got to hold her without being under the influence of strong anesthetics, and I had never seen my beautiful wife more happy, and I knew at that moment that we were all going to be alright.

The next few days we stayed in the hospital so they could observe Erin and Maddie and make sure they were both recovering well enough to go back home. I would go between the hospital and the house to check on our dogs and feed them and then return to the hospital. Unfortunately, due to me just recently starting a new job, I was unable to take any more time off than what I had already taken for the few days we were in the hospital, so I had to go back to work almost immediately after we got home from the hospital, leaving Erin, who just went through two extremely traumatic surgeries, to shoulder the entire burden of taking care of our newborn daughter, and let me tell you, not only did she rise to that occasion, she destroyed anyone’s expectations with how well she handled taking care of Maddie. When I say I don’t believe a better mother exists on Earth than my wife, I truly do mean it, even if I may be a little biased.

The next 14 months of our lives flew by, and our little Maddie Bear isn’t so little anymore, and at the time of writing this, she is two days away from being 15 months, and she’s the light of mine and her mother’s lives. Erin and I thought we had resigned ourselves to just having our daughter and focusing on giving her the best life that we could possibly give her, but recently we have decided that we love being parents so much to her that we wish to do it again, and we have decided to try IVF and surrogacy as our first avenue to having another child.

Unfortunately, as you well know, both of those things are extremely expensive, and the job that God called me to do on this Earth, being a police officer, despite being the most rewarding job there is, in my opinion, doesn’t pay well enough for me to be able to afford something like IVF and surrogacy without a significant financial impact. Which is why I am hoping that after hearing mine and Erin’s and Maddie’s story, you’d be willing to consider us as good candidates. Thank you for your time, and I hope you have a blessed day.

Sincerely,

Joshua Kitchens