Campaign Story

Our Story:

Trigger Warning: Pregnancy Loss & IVF Failure

It is hard to believe how fortunate Nikki and I are to find each other in this life. Being together has ignited so much joy in each other, in life, our future that we decided we wanted to build a family together, to have a child to share our love and home with. We knew when we started building our life together that we had a very limited window to try being parents together. We started trying for a baby in November of 2023 and to our absolute elation, we got pregnant by late January of 2024. We were so excited and couldn’t believe our luck. However, by 13 weeks pregnant our joy took a difficult turn when we learned that our baby had a non-survivable genetic issue. As our hopes for that pregnancy came to an end in April, we shared perhaps one of the hardest and most unique griefs either of us had ever experienced.

Our doctors were hopeful by how quick we conceived the first time and said we could retry in eight weeks after the loss of the pregnancy. However, three months later, in August, Nikki was diagnosed with Asherman’s syndrome, a rare scar tissue disorder from the D&C that damages the inside of the uterus, requiring surgery to repair. Well, in our case, two surgeries… so far.

In January of 2025, we found an affordable clinic in Colorado and Nikki dropped everything to start the process. Our odds were good. We got 29 eggs from the retrieval, 19 that were mature, 16 that fertilized, 8 that became blastocysts we could send off to be genetically screened. The odds were that we had an 80% chance of getting a good embryo with the 8 embryos. We were feeling hopeful. We waited for two weeks for the results. When they came, we were crushed again to learn that every embryo had severe genetic abnormalities. All of that energy, emotion, time and money was gone and we were back at square one.

We realized in the aftermath that we still wanted a child but we knew our window was closing. The older you get, the worse the odds but we’ve decided we’re gonna give this one more attempt. We bought the hundreds of dollars of medications and supplements, (yes, proven scientifically) eliminated every vice you can imagine (from alcohol and sugar to hot tubs and having cellphones in our pockets) and are doing every possible thing we can to bend the odds in our favor. We’re hoping to try again in 90 days.

Our hope is for just one child. Finding love later in life is wild. Finding ourselves in a place in life where we’re simultaneously planning for retirement and trying to build our first home together. Of reading reviews for baby strollers and retirement homes (jk parents, we would never do that to you) at the same time. To be totally blunt, IVF is expensive. So many procedures, travel, medications, time of work, all of it out of pocket. If our second round of IVF produces viable embryos AND we get to carry it to term; our total cost will be close to $30,000 out of pocket. If we need more cycles they cost about $12,000-$16,000 each.

This is to say… we have been so blessed to receive support from so many people already. some financial and a lot emotional.Thank you to all of you who have made this possible already, who have created the community that we are so hopeful to bring a baby into. We sincerely could not have dreamed of doing this without you. It’s been a hard, disappointing road trying to have a child. We are SO lucky in our friends, our family and each other. It is a miraculous and blessed life we live. If all you can give is your love, your prayers and your fondest thoughts, we’ll take them all.
With Love,
Nikki and Dane
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