Hello to All !!!

Thank you so much for deciding to visit our page and read our story. First I would like to say that any time taken to read our story and share our page is very much appreciated and can help our cause in more ways than you can imagine! While most people say  it takes a village to raise a child, for us it seems it may take a village just to have one.

As many of you know Morgan and I have been together for over a decade now and happily married since 2014. I never knew I could love someone so much until I met Morgan. He is my better half in all ways and we have always dreamed of having a family of our own. In fact, shortly after getting married  we excitedly picked out baby names even though we knew we weren't quite ready for a family yet. After a couple years to ourselves we decided in 2017 to grow our family. We assumed things would go smoothly as we were both young and healthy. Unfortunately we never could have predicted how difficult this journey would be. 

After a year of trying and being nothing but disappointed by our results, we were referred to an infertility specialist. This led to months of expensive and painful testing but ultimately allowed for us to begin our first medicated cycle in September 2018. We were excited to finally get some help and to my amazement it worked beautifully and I got pregnant! I cannot express the excitement I felt that after a year and a half of trying my prayers for a miracle had been heard and we were finally going to be parents. But to our dismay that joy was short lived. Days after finally getting that big fat positive test result I went in for my first ultrasound and the doctors saw fluid in my abdomen. After some more testing they determined I had an ectopic pregnancy, had ruptured a fallopian tube, and was bleeding internally. I was then taken in for emergency surgery and it was there that the doctors realized they had made a mistake. The fluid in my abdomen was actually coming from a rupture ovarian cyst, which is commonly caused by fertility medication, and not in fact by a ruptured fallopian tube. By then though the damage from the surgery and medication had already been done and our pregnancy was no longer deemed viable by the surgeon.

After needing to undergo a D and C, in addition to the  surgery, my body still was unwilling to accept the loss of my pregnancy. After initially dropping for a couple weeks my HCG (the pregnancy hormone) level began to climb again. We knew this wasn't a sign that we were pregnant again and our doctors were at a loss.  After weeks and weeks of testing to try and figure out what my body was doing the doctors began discussing chemo and a second D and C as possible solutions. We were angry, sad, and scared. We wanted answers but the doctors had never seen something quite like this before and didn’t have any for us. Eventually my body accepted that there was no baby and thankfully no further treatments were needed. By this point though we were emotionally exhausted and took a little break in order for us to work through the anger and loss we were feeling. After a couple months of group therapy we began feeling hopeful again. We figured that if we had gotten pregnant on our first month with assistance then we could do it again, right? Well, after 5 more medicated cycles, including 4 IUIs (Intrauterine Insemination), we still had no positive pregnancy tests and were referred to an IVF specialist - yup more doctors, more tests, and more waiting. 

Since our insurance doesn’t cover IVF it took us over a year to save up for it. We buckled down and in June of 2020 we were ready to begin and hoped this would be our final step towards bringing home a baby of our own. We began the emotional and physical journey once again of  shots, medication, blood work, and monitoring that would eventually lead us to 5 embryos. We were hopeful that this was our shot and transferred our best looking embryo 5 days after retrieval and prayed that it would stick. Our specialist had stated that we only had a 25% chance of success though due to my poor uterine lining but that this was the best chance we were ever going to get. Going forward, even with medication and all the assistance they could give, my best odds would only be about 10% to carry my own child. Devastatingly our little embryo didn’t take. We were utterly heartbroken and our doctor suggested we look into moving on to surrogacy. It was heart wrenching for us to hear that I would never be able to carry a child of our own but my sister-in-law had offered to be our surrogate so we still had some hope. With another twist to our journey it was found after some preliminary testing she was deemed unfit for surrogacy due to an underlying health condition she was unaware of. At this point I felt like giving up. I was tired of trying to be strong and hopeful when everything seemed to always end in disappointment and pain. Luckily Morgan is more optimistic than I am and kept reminding me of those four beautiful little frozen embryos that we made together and at the end of the day we agreed we just can’t and won't give up on them.

That brings us to where we are now. It has been 4 years since we started this journey to grow our family. Each year has been filled with optimism and disappointment as we have moved from one step in the process to the next, hoping each would be our last. This is our last step and we are typically not the kind of people who ask for help but after years of trying, tens of thousands of dollars already spent, and surrogacy rates that start at $100,000, we have had to accept that we can’t do this alone. So it is now that we ask our village to provide whatever support they can because there is no going forward without your help. We are humbly asking you to help make our dream of bringing home a little one of our own come true.  With love and everlasting gratitude , 

Morgan and Shelby Lowe