Campaign Story

Just a little introduction we are Meghan and Antoine Murray. Meghan is 37 years old and Antoine will be 37 this September. We met in 2009 and got married in 2014. It’s hard to believe we’ve been together for nearly 14 years. Meghan is a nurse and Antoine works in manufacturing and also coaches high school football. We have two 11 year old puppies that we just adore.

Now a little bit about our infertility journey. We started to try to conceive a child shortly after getting married. After 2 or so years of trying on our own we realized that there may be a problem. After a couple trips to the fertility doctor we soon found that our only option to have biological children would probably be IVF. We were instantly deflated because we knew that was a financial hurdle we could not climb at the time. Meghan was still in nursing school full time so we were living off solely Antoine’s income. Many who have never gone through IVF often do not know what an incredible expense it truly is without any insurance coverage and that was an expense that was far from our reality.

Over the next 6 years we put our heads down and did everything we could to build up our savings in hopes that one day we could afford the process it would take to fulfill our dream of having a child. We put many other dreams on hold to do this. Finally in January of this year we had enough saved to start the process. We did our egg retrieval and genetic testing in April of this year and had great results for our age. We ended up with 5 perfect genetically normal “embabies” that were then frozen and waiting for transfer. We then began to prepare for our first transfer and on June 15th of this year we transferred our first embryo and 2 weeks later we were pregnant for the first time! Unfortunately, the joy was short lived and by 7 weeks for unknown reasons the embryo stopped growing. Although we knew this was a possibility there are no words to describe the gut wrenching pain and heartbreak that we experienced over the following week.

We still consider ourselves blessed to have 4 more embryos to potentially become our miracle baby. We really want to attempt another transfer soon because age/time is not on our side but financially another transfer is very difficult at this time. We have tapped into our retirements and have spent over $35,000 since February between testing, medications, egg retrieval, genetic testing and transfer costs.

It is very difficult for us to make such a personal part of our lives so public but we both believe because it’s a struggle that 1 in 8 couples face that people should be able to be transparent about it without feeling ashamed. It is even more difficult for us to ask for financial help but we believe many people would hear our story and possibly want to help. There are no words to describe how thankful we are for absolutely any help we receive big or small. Even if you can’t help financially we appreciate you taking the time to listen to our story.