Campaign Story

The Saga of Team Paulling

Boy meets Girl at camp and falls in love with Girl; don’t worry, both are college-aged counselors. Girl thinks he’s pretty neat, but she’s SUPER busy loving Jesus and loving these kids to deal with Boy. Boy and Girl talk on the phone…a lot. Boy moves to Arkansas to be with Girl after college. Girl falls so hard in love with Boy that they hate being apart. Boy and Girl get married.

Totally the typical love story. Yet, not anything typical about their story. Sam and Hannah did get married in November of 2011, but not without a few hiccups. See, I (Hannah) was getting pretty sick before we got married. I told Sam when we were engaged, “The doctors are having a hard time figuring out what’s wrong with me. It seems like I’m going to be sick for a long time. If you want to get out, this is the time. We’re not married yet. Our life could be really hard.” Sam replied in super Sam fashion, “If you’re going to be sick the rest of your life, I’m going to be the one to take care of you.”

Little did we know that this would be the running theme of our marriage. I was diagnosed with Lyme disease in February of 2012. I spent years and years fighting it off with loads of antibiotics and anxiety. I went back to teaching in 2013 thinking I was doing better, but by May of 2015 I was so sick again that I almost didn’t get to finish out the school year. Sam held us together with his strong arms through it all.

Finally we thought I was well enough to responsibly start trying to have kids. We’re the kind of couple that hasn’t ever really met a kid we didn’t like. We’ve always wanted to be parents and love a kid well and do our absolute best to grow them up in a Spirit-filled home.

In 2016, We excitedly started trying to get pregnant.
We thought 2017 was going to be the “year of the baby.”
Then we hoped it would be 2018.
Then we prayed and prayed that it would be 2019.
Then we headed to a fertility doctor. Something clearly wasn’t working. Our doctor thought I had endometriosis and scheduled surgery. We hoped this would fix all our problems, and after this procedure we would finally be able to have a kid. We went into surgery in May of 2020 (after many pandemic-related delays and rescheduled appointments) so excited for this to be the turning point for our family. Instead, we came out of the procedure with a biopsy and cancer diagnosis.

Two years of cancer fighting and research and experimental drugs later, we realized it would super no longer be responsible (or possible) for me to get pregnant. It also turns out that adoption agencies feel weird about giving new babies to a parent who has rare, chronic, inoperable cancer, even though it’s stabilized and the doctors have told me, “You’re probably going to die with this cancer instead of from it.”
We are ready to have a kid, and we have run out of conventional options to get one.
So what do we do? Pray to the Living God for a solution.

Enter Dayton Lavender Stanley, a friend from college who we had lost touch with. We reconnected again at a mutual friend’s house. She texted me later that week and asked if we’ve ever thought about surrogacy, and if there’s any way she could carry a baby for us.

When in fact we had just (two weeks earlier) come to terms with the fact that surrogacy was probably our only possible option for a baby. See, Sam is adopted. He grew up in an absolutely wonderful and loving family, but doesn’t have anyone blood related to him. We were afraid we were going to have to let go of the dream we have always dreamed for him to get to be blood related to a member of his family. But God, in His abundant grace, put Dayton and myself around the same firepit in the backyard of a friend and led the conversation for me to open up about infertility. Turns out, Dayton (mother of three, one three year old boy and two one year old twins) had been looking into surrogacy. She thought that she was going to be pregnant three times and then had twins. So, she wanted to use her remaining pregnancy as a gift to someone.

We get to be that someone.

We said yes and both cried happy tears over God’s faithfulness in both of our lives. We were so excited to start moving forward on this crazy journey together.

The problem is that surrogacy is the least fun and most expensive way to make a baby. We’ve been saving up for years assuming we were going to eventually adopt, but cancer is also expensive. We have a chunk squirreled away, but not quite enough. And so we are hoping that you will be a part of this story with us. If there’s any way you’d be willing to donate to fund Baby Paulling’s journey into the world, we would be forever grateful.
Join Team Baby Paulling and join the story of arguably the most anticipated and fought for baby of the modern era. We can’t thank you enough.