JoHanna and Carleen Grow Their Family

Hey, my name is JoHanna. I am creating this gofundme in hopes to relieve the financial stress for my family while we undergo the process of in-vetro fertilization (IVF.) Asking for help, especially financial help, has never been easy for me. However, the benefit of this help will greatly outweigh the discomfort I feel in asking for it. I want to provide a little back story as to why I am asking for help.

As many of you know, we (my wife, Carleen, and I) have been in the process of adopting Gemma for well over 2 years. It has been a long, expensive, but SO WORTH IT journey. For those of you who don’t know, Gemma is my biological niece. She came into the care of my mom at just 2 months old due to her biological parents struggle with alcohol/substance abuse. I moved home from Maine in 2021, and I slowly took over parental resposibilities of Gemma. In August 2021, Gemma and I moved into our own place and soon after that my wife, Carleen, came into both of our lives. She has loved Gemma as her own from the start. Not long after that, I met with an attorney to begin the process of adopting Gemma. Just in the last month we were able to FINALLY terminate her bio-mom’s parental rights, which was required to free Gemma for adoption. We have been told that we should have an adoption hearing soon after the start of the new year. We are ELATED to finally feel as though Gemma is truly ours, and Gemma has been dreaming of her adoption day for well over a year now. This whole process has been an expensive endeavor, and we still have the termination hearing, filing the court papers, and the final adoption hearing and filing for that. After this adoption process is complete, we are not left with much to cover the cost of expanding our family.

We are so ready and excited to give our daughter a younger sibling and she tells us almost everyday how ready she is to be a big sister, although she did say if we have a boy we’ll have to return him. LOL We have begun the fertility process through Mayo Clinic and have been told that we should be ready to start medication in January. With that being said, we are anticipating a large financial load in the coming year. With that comes some additional stress, as any big investment has, and we desperately want to keep our stress as low as possible as we work to conceive. So, not only will your donation help us financially, it will lift a little stress off our shoulders, giving us more positive energy to focus on conception.

All funds donated will be transferred directly to our bank account and be used to cover the medical expenses and medication necessary for IVF. We are happy to set aside time to talk with anyone who has questions regarding the IVF process and/or what the financial impact will be.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking the time to read our story. If you have the means, please consider donating to support the growth of our family. If you don’t have the financial means, sharing our story goes a long way as well and is greatly appreciated.

Peace and love, the Wolfords