Give the Denhams a baby

Hi! We’re Brian and Elizabeth Denham and we want to start our family.

I have always known I am meant to be a mother. When my siblings and I would play “house”, I was always the mom with a ton of kids! In my professional career as a special education teacher, I am somewhat of a “second mom” to many of my students, which brings me joy. I am also a birth doula which allows me to assist mothers in bringing their sweet babies into the world. Although I love what I do, it is bittersweet as I have been unable to have living children with my husband.

When I met Brian in 2019, I knew he was the one for me. He picked up my pieces so easily and put them back together like a puzzle he had completed several times over. I can remember thinking “This guy is so much more than I prayed for!” During our pre-marital counseling, our pastor brought up children and I can remember saying “Of course we will be having children”- it was a no-brainer for us. We knew we had the foundation needed to be great parents to our future children. Not long after we got married I became pregnant with our son, Henry. After that loss at 20 weeks, we unknowingly entered a rollercoaster that would send us through the most turmoil we’ve ever experienced.

A few months after losing Henry, I experienced an ectopic pregnancy which resulted in a blocked Fallopian tube, and a chemical pregnancy over Christmas of 2022. Then, in 2023 we tried four months of fertility treatments with medicated cycles and injections to force ovulation. With those being unsuccessful, we were then told to move to IVF. We did one egg retrieval and two embryo transfers (transferring all 3 of our embryos) which failed. At that point, we had exhausted all financial options and decided to take a break. During our “break”, I became pregnant! We thought surely this miracle was the one. The keeper. Unfortunately, during our ten-week appointment, we learned baby didn’t have a heartbeat. I was told at my follow-up appointment after that miscarriage by my OBGYN that I had a rare blood clotting disorder along with two genetic mutations that are linked to recurrent miscarriage. She explained that sometimes women cannot grow their babies to term and that could be my reality. At this point, Brian and I started to talk about other paths for growing our family besides biological children.

We would love to adopt an infant to bring into our little family. With my husband’s career as a contractor and mine as a special education teacher, we have steady careers that have been able to provide a lovely home for us over the years. In our free time, we love to spend time outdoors. My parents live on a lake so we spend a lot of time up there in the summer. We tent camp every year with my sister and brother-in-law, we have a garden in the backyard where we grow the bulk of our veggies every summer, and we both love to cook! We also have two dogs- Richard (5 years old) and Douglas (1 year old) who are very spoiled and ready to be big brothers!

We are requesting financial assistance for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that the less we spend on adoption, the more we have to spend on baby. We do not need the best and most expensive of everything, however, babies do require items that we will need to furnish our home with in addition to clothing and formula- which we will need money for. Additionally, we have already taken out money to help pay for fertility treatments, house projects, and IVF treatments in the form of loans people typically use to pay for a potential adoption. To be honest, we never thought the fertility treatments wouldn’t work, so we were comfortable going “all in” with our funds. Lastly, at the beginning of 2024, my husband's work trailer and all of his tools were stolen from us. We did not get a lot of insurance coverage from this and ended up with a significant loss financially of $20,000.

If we become fortunate enough to be blessed by financial assistance and we can pay for an adoption, we are prepared to raise the baby to know and love God. God’s grace has saved my husband and me on more occasions than we can count. The Bible and Its scripture have been a major source of comfort for us and we know God isn’t done with our story yet!

We have a beautiful nursery, fresh and brand new waiting on a sweet little baby to come and fill it. Brian and I have chosen Catholic Charities of South East Michigan for our adoption agency as they are faith-based and honestly on the cheaper end of private adoptions around here. The funds will be used to pay for the home study-$4,000, the adoption itself- $10,000-$15,000, and the *potential* to need to pay $5,000-$7,000 in miscellaneous fees (we will not know if we need those funds until meeting that step in the process so it is a bit of an unknown). Private adoptions in the United States range anywhere from $25,000-$50,000 and double that price if we would like to adopt overseas. We are truly thankful for any donations we receive. We only want the money to go towards adoption, therefore if we do not meet our goal to make the adoption happen, we will give you the option to receive your donation back!

We are ready to be parents and would love your support in building our family. Thank you so much for reading!

I am attaching pictures of our dogs along with fun pictures of us :)