Austin Family Adoption Fundraiser

Hello! We are David, Brooke, and little Astrid: the Austin Family. We are raising money to help cover the cost of adopting another baby into our family!

 

Our Story:

We were married in 2012. From the beginning, our vision of our family included children. In the fall of 2013, we were excited to discover that we were pregnant, and we looked forward to welcoming a new baby into our family. Unfortunately, our expectations were shattered when an ultrasound showed that our baby had many issues with his brain, heart, and lungs that could not be fixed. Our son, Marcus, was born in March of 2014 and died in our arms. The death of our son devastated us, but we still wished to pursue trying to have children. We were further grieved when our two subsequent pregnancies ended in miscarriage. We turned to a fertility doctor for answers, but did not have success conceiving after several rounds of treatments. In 2018, we chose to open our home and hearts to the option of adoption. We are part of an incredibly supportive community that functions as extended family, and adoption was a natural extension of that loving relationship with others. We were wonderfully blessed by the adoption of our daughter, Astrid, in 2020. She has brought so much joy to our family. Because we have always wanted our children to have siblings, we have chosen to come back to adoption to grow our family.

 

About our adoption:

The road we have chosen for adoption is through domestic infant adoption, meaning we will be adopting a newborn baby in the United States. We are working with Adoption Partners of Michigan, a relatively new agency that connects with expectant mothers in Michigan who are considering adoption. The agency is small, but very friendly. We have completed the rigorous process to become approved to adopt, and our adoption profile is live on ParentFinder.com. We now are waiting to be chosen to be adoptive parents!

 

Adoption Expenses:

The total cost of this adoption is expected to be a minimum of $23,000. We are hoping to raise enough money to cover the fees that are due after we are matched with a birth mother. These fees include:

 

We are also hoping for help paying for the $200/month Outreach Fee, which is the advertising fee ParentFinder charges us for hosting our profile. For Astrid's adoption, we waited two years before being matched, so we estimate that the cost of advertising our profile could be around $2400. Unlike when we worked with Bethany Christian Services in 2018, Adoption Partners of Michigan is a very small and mostly unknown agency (although they have connected with many local hospitals and crisis pregnancy centers). This means that expecting parents are unlikely to have heard of the agency and are less likely to discover it in a Google search if they are trying to learn about adoption options online. By having their waiting adoptive families work with ParentFinder, Adoption Partners of Michigan increases our visibility online. An expecting mom might find our profile online without knowing anything about the agency we are working with.

 

You can view our profile book on ParentFinder here!

 

In addition to our fundraising efforts, we are both working to earn extra money towards these anticipated adoption expenses. Many friends and family are helping with babysitting Astrid so that Brooke can pick up extra shifts in her job as a nurse. David continues to commit himself to his position as a research scientist, sometimes working late evenings and on Saturdays.

 

We thank you for taking time to read about our adoption plans! We hope that you might be able to offer us some financial assistance, but we know that it not possible for everyone. We ask that you keep us in your prayers as we hope we may adopt soon, but know we may be asked to wait a few years. Pray that we may find peace in whatever the future holds.