Campaign Story

This is my beautiful daughter Leslie. She’s always dreamed of having her own family but Mr Right hasn’t made his appearance yet, and she made the decision to freeze some of her eggs so that she can have children in the future. She’s applied for multiple fertility scholarships and almost got one but sadly the funding for that scholarship ended. Her supervisor at her Masters internship kindly offered to set up a GoFundMe, and it only ended up being enough to cover the deposit to hold her spot for the retrieval. At the time Leslie was in graduate school and didn’t qualify for a fertility loan and decided to withdraw some funds from her retirement she had at her prior job. Unfortunately the results of the retrieval weren’t what we were hoping for and her Dr agreed that she needs another one. She’s healthy and her Dr feels she’s an excellent canidate for IVF and that she could carry a baby to term. She has low AMH levels which means her egg supply is low and is getting lower each month, so she can’t put off another egg retrieval. If she doesn’t have the second egg retrieval soon, she may not be able to have a child of her own.

Leslie would be an incredible mom! She’s always willing to help those in need and always looking for ways to she can help someone. She always strives to be a better therapist and looks for ways to help and advocate for her clients. She’s got a big heart and genuinely cares for those around her. She’s also given so much of her life to serving others and deserves to have the universe pay her back for that dedication and selflessness.

Anyone who knows Leslie personally can attest to the fact that she’s got a big heart and shows up for others in their time of need. 

When Leslie was growing up we took in foster kids (163 total). Leslie always made every effort to make sure that her foster siblings felt welcome and cared for and saw them as her siblings rather than “foster kids.” Leslie was our miracle baby and she grew up knowing about my fertility struggles. When she was little she would always pretend that her baby dolls were her siblings, not her own babies. At the time I thought it was because I knew how much she wanted a sibling of her own since we couldn’t have any more of our own and our attempts to adopt an older child had failed. It wasn’t until she was an adult that she told me the real reason why she pretended her dolls were her siblings. She said that in the back of her head she knew even at a young age that infertility can be passed down and if she didn’t imagine being a mom when she grew up and found out later that she couldn’t have children that it would hurt less because she hadn’t grown up imagining wanting to have kids (kind of like if you had never dreamed of becoming a ballerina, then if you didn’t grow up to become one it wouldn’t be disappointing).

Its been heartbreaking to watch her struggle to try and be able to have a baby of her own and I know first hand the heartache she’s going through and I wish there was some way for me to magically make everything work. I’ve been so blown away at how hard she’s worked to get through grad school, find a way to do the first egg retrieval, and still not give up her hopes of doing a second and having a child. 

Leslie works as a masters level social worker and hardly any funding out there to help those in “helping” professions and there’s no funding assistance for social workers trying to start a family.