Hi there. Most people know me as a writer. I can easily string together hundreds of thousands of words to create worlds, characters, and everything else to make an enjoyable book. But to talk about my personal life, much less my struggles, is difficult for me. (I’ve already deleted & retyped these paragraphs too many times.) I am not the one to ask for help and often internalize. However, this affects more than just me but also my wife and our future.

About a year and half ago my wife and I began the journey to become pregnant. We started simple and did at-home insemination, attempting four times and having no luck. Afterwards, we decided it was time to seek professional help so we found a great fertility clinic. After a lot of testing and a hysteroscopy procedure, I was allowed to begin medicated IUI and attempted four & half rounds. Again, all failed. Except one did result in an upsetting chemical pregnancy. Part way into the fifth IUI, we halted everything due to financial, emotional, and physical burdens. My body was especially stressed out by the months & months of treatment, developing tinnitus, constant muscle spasms, and minor back trouble. (Amen for chiropractors!) Thankfully my body has mostly bounced back and I returned to my normal exercise regimen.

Recently, my wife and I have decided to move onto reciprocal IVF treatment, which has a much higher probability of success. One of the important benefits (for us) to using reciprocal IVF is that my wife is younger than me, raising the chances her eggs are better than mine. Also with reciprocal IVF, we would be blessed with my wife being the biological mother and myself as the birth mother.

The reciprocal IVF treatment, fertility drugs, and vials come at a hefty price. Thankfully we have enough vials leftover from IUI to use for IVF (one of the reasons we halted IUI). The IVF procedure runs between $16,000 to $17,700 and the fertility drugs cost between $4,000 to $7,500. We hope to cover the fertility drugs, but the procedure’s cost itself is beyond our means after financing (i.e. loans) for at-home (vials) and IUI (more vials, appointments, & fertility drugs).

Any support towards our pregnancy journey will make a great difference and give us hope to keep moving forward. Thank you for all the love, support, and well wishes to us. <3

PS: Please stay tuned for information about an upcoming Facebook auction that'll include sapphic books from various authors.