My sophomore year of high school I was delivered the devastating news that I would never be able to carry or give birth to a baby of my own. After many diagnostic tests I was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome. This means that unfortunately I was born without a uterus. I have struggled with this diagnosis ever since I found out. I always wanted a large family and I could not wait to become a mom.
In 2015 I met the man of my dreams, Jeremy. He had two kids from his previous marriage, Emily who at the time was 4 years old and Jeremy Jr who was 15 years old at the time. The first year of our relationship was spent fighting for custody of both kids and thankfully we were awarded custody in 2016. We were so thrilled for our family to be whole. While the kids still visited their mom it was an amazing feeling to have that taste of motherhood.
Jeremy and I married in 2018 in a dream wedding at the Toledo Zoo in the Aquarium. We always knew we wanted to have a child of our own. So at that time in our life we started looking in to having a surrogate. We unfortunately were unable to find anyone willing to make that sacrifice for us until this year 2021. We were blessed with an absolutely amazing individual who stepped in to our lives and offered to carry a baby for us. After discussing it we immediately knew we wanted this still after all these years together. We started the process right away! There have been many doctors visits and diagnostics done to make sure we were both healthy and we realized quickly how much the cost was adding up. We knew it would not be an inexpensive process but we never dreamed the funds we would need to come up with. We were blessed with the stimulus checks that we saved to give us a little bit of a cushion in our savings account to help with the cost. Unfortunately in the beginning of April the children’s mother passed away unexpectedly. We wanted to make sure we did the right thing for both kids and give their mother a proper funeral; which in turn took away a portion of our savings. We shortly after got the estimate for the procedure which totaled around $23,000 not including all the additional medications and diagnostics. We knew we would not be able to come up with that money easily but we also knew we wanted to do anything we could to make our dream of growing our family come true.
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