Help Mia & Pierre pay for their surrogate

I’ve wanted to be a mom since I was 12. Not many kids think about this so young but I learned this about myself early on being the oldest of 4 girls. My sisters were 3, 9, and 12 years younger than me so I became the built-in babysitter since my mom worked nights at the hospital and my dad worked days. I fell in love with taking care of others and always dreamed of one day having children of my own. However, as most of you know, Pierre and I have had a very difficult journey trying to build our family.

In 2013, I was diagnosed with cervical cancer and underwent a rare surgery called a radical trachelectomy at Sloan Kettering. Fast forward to March 2022, after months of trying, our doctors told us the same surgery that saved my life + another complication would leave me unable to get pregnant naturally and IVF would be our only potential option. I went through 6 rounds of IVF, twice my body filled with blood and fluid and eventually had to force my body into menopause to heal my inflamed uterus. We were blessed enough to transfer a baby boy and were completely devastated when we lost him. The emotional toll of IVF and infertility is something I would never wish on anyone. It has the ability to steal your light and at one point I cried for 57 days straight. But through it all we continued to remain hopeful. After many discussions with our doctors and high risk specialists, we made the difficult decision to move forward with a surrogate, our very last option. This is the safest route for our remaining embryos and our priority is bringing our child into this earth safely. We don’t care how our baby gets here, as long as they get here ❤️

This year brought us some light though when we matched quickly with an amazing surrogate in early June after signing with an agency. While there are a few hoops to get through before we can actually transfer, this was a huge win. That being said, I’m sure you can imagine having a surrogate is an extremely expensive process. For reference, most of the agencies we spoke to wanted us to pay $150K-$200K upfront, which is something we could not do. Luckily, we found one agency that had more payment flexibility and they have given us an additional month to get our finances in order.

So now, we need your help and it’s a heavy ask. Between paying six figures for our fertility treatments (ironically the cost of a surrogate) and living off just my salary because Pierre's work visa was delayed again, it has put us in a very difficult place financially. I feel guilty, especially in this current environment, asking for financial support but we also can’t move forward without it. We estimate our all in costs to be ~$140K and we have set a goal of hopefully raising a third of that. However, any amount we raise will help us to offset this large financial burden. All of the money will go toward the costs associated with this process: Agency fees, surrogate compensation, medications, medical appointments, transfer fees, surrogacy health insurance, travel expenses, separate legal fees for us and our surrogate, and the list goes on. If you are in a position to contribute, we owe you the world for helping to get us one step closer to creating the family we've always dreamed of.