Campaign Story

Wishing for Baby Matthews – Surrogacy fund
Carl & Michelle Matthews

We can only hope our story will have a happy ending, complete with a beautiful baby that will be so overwhelmingly loved. After a seven-year fertility journey, our second embryo transfer was a success that ended tragically. We lost our thirteen-week-old baby girl and my uterus to an emergency hysterectomy on 7/4/2025.
The hospital and surgery cost was $201,000. We were fortunate to have some financial assistance for this. This experience was devastating and overwhelming.
We are doing everything possible to come up with the funds for surrogacy with six embryos waiting to continue our journey of hope to have a baby in our arms to love unconditionally.
The average cost of surrogacy in the US is $120,000 to $180,000. We would be so grateful for any amount of support.

Here is some background about our journey that brought us to seek surrogacy.
We met in May of 2000. Michelle had two boys, ages seven and nine, from a previous marriage. Carl had no biological children of his own. We married two years later. Our bond has only grown throughout the twenty-five years we have been together.

Our fertility journey started in 2018, after sixteen years of marriage. We wanted nothing more than to have one child together. We started with fertility testing for both of us, followed by a tubal surgery for me, so we could begin trying to conceive.

After trying naturally for six years, we were told my fallopian tubes were too short and that I had a diminished ovarian reserve. The recommendation was to pursue IVF with donor eggs.
We moved forward and selected an egg donor at the beginning of 2024 and created embryos in Nevada in December. We then cryo-shipped them to our fertility clinic in Oregon.

Seven years into our journey, the first embryo transfer failed in January of 2025, and our second transfer was done in April. On April 29th, we finally got our first positive pregnancy test.
We were overjoyed that we might finally have the baby who would complete our family. We were both emotional thinking about all the tears and heartache we had suffered.

It wasn’t long before we ended up in the hospital with a big scare after Mother’s Day dinner. I was bleeding. Hospital tests inconclusive, a follow-up ultrasound confirmed heartbeat. We cried with relief.
Only a few days later, we were back in the hospital due to heavy bleeding. A gestational hemorrhage was found, but the baby was okay. The doctor reassured us that this is not uncommon and happens in one out of three pregnancies.
Over the next few weeks we had four more ultrasounds, tests showed no chromosomal issues. Each appointment we had tears of joy and hearts full of love seeing our baby jumping, rolling over, and hearing a strong heartbeat was all reassuring.

Our maternal fetal medicine clinic referred us to the highest level of specialist in Oregon at OHSU for additional imaging to rule out placenta previa and assess things further because the gestational sac was very low, and there was a blood clot in the way of imaging.
OHSU had a full team of specialists review the findings. We were told the risk of continuing pregnancy for even a week or two was too great. It was only a matter of time before a rupture. They would not be able to stop it. I would have miscarried, and we both would have died. There were no other options possible.
In order to save my life, I was admitted to the hospital for observation, an MRI, a uterine artery block, and then scheduled for emergency surgery.
I was woken on July 4th at 6:00 a.m. and told it was time for surgery. My husband finally got the news four hours later that I was out of surgery and was going to be okay. We could hardly comprehend everything that happened. Within forty-eight hours of our imaging appointment, I was out of surgery, and our baby was gone.

My diagnosis was cervical ectopic pregnancy with placenta percreta and multiple large fibroids inside and outside the uterus. We were told it is extremely rare to have all of these problems at once. The placenta had grown through the muscle wall of the uterus and fetal tissue recruited additional large blood vessels in the cervix that had already thinned to one centimeter and was bulging, soon to rupture. The baby was pushing into my bladder because the fibroids filled the top half of my uterus. A block was put in the main veins going to the uterus to prevent too much blood loss during surgery. The surgery was performed by six specialists. I then faced twelve weeks of recovery and healing.

Our baby was perfect, but there was no way to save her at thirteen weeks and one day of gestation.
Our Angel Baby girl took a piece of us with her on July 4th, 2025.
We named her Anya Dakota Matthews.

We lost everything, including our ability to try to conceive again.
We still have six embryos and are working to come up with the funds for surrogacy, as it’s the only option left for us.
We live in Oregon and are hoping to find a surrogate close to home so we can be actively present and have a close relationship throughout this process.
We plan to donate any unused embryos to another family to give hope to someone else who is struggling with infertility, just as we did.
We have embryos waiting and would love more than anything to have a beautiful baby in our arms. 🌈❤️
We would be so grateful if you would please consider donating to our surrogacy fund.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story.
Wishing for Baby Matthews,
Carl & Michelle Matthews