Campaign Story

We are Shannon and Tracey, an LGBTQ+ couple looking to build our family! We were married in 2023 in Wolfeboro, NH. Our household consists of the two of us, our dog Lola, and our two cats – Sona & Cara. Throughout our relationship, we have bonded over our love for travel – taking trips to Minnesota, New Hampshire, Maine, North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Portugal & The Azores, and even taking road trips down the East Coast to Florida and up to Niagara Falls and Toronto.

Tracey works in the field of veterinary care, sharing her love for animals and her vast knowledge of vet medicine with her clients daily. In her free time you will finding her befriending animals everywhere she goes, enthralled in a true crime show or podcast, and thinking about the next meal she will cook (Italian food is her specialty).

Shannon is a project manager for a hospital system, working on projects that have recently included the construction of an inpatient mental health facility and the construction of a brand new state of the art labor and delivery floor in a women’s hospital. In her free time, you can find her curled up on the couch to join Tracey in streaming the latest true crime series, reading, and trying her hand at new crafts.

We have spent the past several years together growing and building our life together. Each day we are supported and challenged by one another. We are very excited for this next chapter of growth in our life and we can’t wait to share with all of you!

So here’s the plan – we would love to grow our family by two kids. We plan to have one via reciprocal IVF and another via either IUI or IVF… That brings both of us into the process, with Shannon carrying both pregnancies and us both having a biological connection to our kids! Which will happen first? That is for our doctors to decide!

We have always wanted to start a family, but the cost of doing so stands in the way. You might wonder – how much will it actually cost us? Based on average costs in the US, a cycle of unmedicated IUI costs $250, IUI including medications starts at around $500 and can go up to about $4,000. A cycle of IVF (including medications) typically starts at around $20,000. On top of this, donor sperm per vial costs around $2,500 (1-3 vials needed per cycle, this pricing includes shipping to clinic). Unfortunately we do not qualify for any insurance coverage at this time.

While we hope that the first cycle will be a success, we are faced with the reality that IUI has a success rate of around 13% and IVF has a success rate of around 54%. We really don’t know how many cycles will result in a pregnancy for us. We will use these funds for the many costs associated with our fertility journey – including but not limited to sperm donation costs (we plan to buy for all future children at once to keep with the same donor), IVF procedure costs, IUI procedure costs, egg retrievals, embryo transfers, sperm/egg/embryo preservation, and fertility drugs.

We appreciate your support of our family building efforts!