Lee & Jill Williams Child Adoption

We have BIG news!

We are adopting a child!

We are beyond excited and are doing everything we can to be prepared to welcome a beautiful new life into our home. As part of our adoption process, we have started a crowdfunding campaign. It may surprise you to hear that adoption related costs can easily total up to $35,000 or more. This is why we have set a goal of $45,000 to help ease the financial burden that often overwhelms adoptive parents.  In fact, our agency has the requirment that we cannot be actively matched with a birth mother until we provide proof that we have at least $45,000.  The agency said to expect the total cost to be anywhere from $45,000-$55,000.  Lee is an active duty military member and I am a high school teacher, so we are doing everything we can to raise money-side jobs, craft shows, benefit dinners and other upcoming fundraiser ideas.  With the recent pandemic, much of our efforts have been on hold and we have resorted to hosting online events, but that too comes with its own challenges.

We hope that by inviting you into this process, you will see yourself as part of the community we hope to build around our child as he/she grows up.  Here's our detailed story:

Lee and I meet in 2008 through mutual college friends. After dating for four years Lee asked me to marry him. In June of 2012 we tied the knot. Within a month of marriage, we set out to South Padre Island, TX due to a military assignment. After getting settled we decided the time was right to start growing our family. After trying naturally for 6 months with no luck, my endocrinologist suggested that due to hormone issues and my battle of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), that I seek additional testing from a fertility specialist. Both of us were tested by the fertility specialist to pin point the issue. The specialist told us that we would never have biological children of our own and to basically "give up".

With much sadness and disappointment we tabled the idea of creating a life. Other options of raising and nurturing a child were discussed. However, In October of 2014 we got the surprise of a lifetime. We had gone from discussing adoption to a positive pregnancy test. I had visited my OBGYN for conformation and there were TWO heartbeats. We could not have been more excited to prepare for twin boys. During the discovery that I was carrying twins, I quickly learned that I was particularly high risk, I was not only carrying twins but Mono-Mono Twins. This means that the boys shared one amniotic sack, one chorion and one placenta. This is very rare as it only happens in 1 out of 10,000 births. Due to the additional risk I was scheduled to deliver via C-section at only 26 weeks and the boys would have only a 50/50 chance of survival.

As if that didn't make us fearful enough, at 20 weeks I went in to the OBGYN for a regular ultrasound follow up to receive devastating news. There was no fetal heartbeat or fetal blood flow, there was no prior indicator that I had lost the babies. Literally no indicators telling me something, anything was wrong. I was supposed to attend my baby shower the next day (since my delivery date was in 6 weeks) but instead had an emergency DNC procedure. I was in absolute denial and had requested one more ultrasound prior to being wheeled into the operating room. Struggling to accept reality, I needed to see that monitor one more time. During the procedure the DNC machine malfunctioned and I had to endure a manual DNC procedure. A procedure that should have lasted roughly thirty minutes took five hours, along with hemorrhaging and blood transfusions, my life was on the line. Meanwhile, Lee sat patiently in the waiting room scared that he was going to lose his wife along with the children that he so desperately wanted to father. The pain that I endured was not only emotional but physical as well. Side effects from the procedure left me debilitated while my body struggled to heal from the traumatic procedure. I struggled to overcome the emotional aspects of the loss and was blessed to work from home at the time. Lee buried his emotions in work for temporary relief and upheld a strong shoulder for me to lean on, but I know he was just as devastated on the inside.

Shortly after the loss of the boys, Lee was reassigned and we were fortunate enough to move to my hometown of Pearland, TX. At the time I was still working in the medical field in Infectious Diseases and I was able to return to work at Texas Children's Hospital where I faced daily struggles working with my patients that were children. Wanting to be a mother so badly this was a very difficult time for me.  After adjusting and taking the time that we needed to heal, we decided we would seek support of the best fertility clinic Houston had to offer. After various testing, exploratory surgeries to remove scar tissue, and other forms of fertility treatments (clomid, IUI, basal thermal monitoring, etc.) we had no success. In November of 2016 we decided to give IVF a try after saving and taking out loans (and still to this day are continuing to pay this loan off). The loan we had taken out was used for the egg retrieval, cryopreservation and one round of IVF and any additional rounds after the initial process would more a obtainable amount to save.  The outlook seemed promising with the amount of eggs that were retrieved and fertilized and the remaining eggs were placed in cryopreservation. The first round of IVF had two eggs that were implanted to increase the odds of a viable pregnancy. After two long weeks of waiting we found out that the embryos did not take.

Once more money was saved for second round, we decided to give IVF another go. This time, it took a bit longer to save as I decided to share my passion of healthcare and medicine by switching careers and becoming a high school teacher. It is a great pleasure to work with children and assist them on a career path in healthcare. We went back to the fertility specialist in May 2018 for what we thought was the beginning process of IVF round two. We instead were informed that testing the embryos for viability was now needed prior to being able to begin round two. So we saved even more and asked friends and family for assistance to help make our dream a reality. After testing the viability and still having enough embryos, God answered our prayers--the second round of IVF worked and I was pregnant! Our joy was short lived however. Early on I started having bleeding and clotting issues and frequent visits for emergency ultrasounds. I miscarried around 10 weeks pregnant.

We continued to be hopeful and prayed to be blessed with children. So after grieving the loss of our 16-year-old Chihuahua, we decided to save yet again and did a third IVF transfer in December 2018. This time it was unsuccessful with no explanation of why.

With our last 2 embryos left, we decided summer of 2019 would be the perfect timing to rest and de-stress after more loss was endured in our family--our 12 year old Weimaraner passed away on the last day of school and then a week later, my grandfather passed away. It certainly had been a difficult year filled with loss, but we were sure the summer of 2019 was going to turn all this sadness around, right? Well, in fact, it did! Lee was deployed on a military mission, but my friends and family were there to help with the last and final fourth round of IVF. I was indeed pregnant again!! Lee and I had decided not to tell him the news until he came home from his mission that if I was pregnant; that way I could do the big surprise to announce it. Unfortunately, at 9 weeks pregnant my HCG levels were not increasing/doubling as they should and the doctor informed me that although I had no other signs like bleeding and such, the lack of my numbers increasing indicates an impending miscarriage. I was crushed but in denial again. They repeated my blood work several times, yet the result remained the same. I officially miscarried the day Lee came home.

We continued to do additional blood work and other testing after the last loss, but no conclusive findings were found. The researcher in me just wants answers as to what's wrong and I've learned to come to reason that we may never know.
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Adoption has always been something that we have discussed and wanted to do despite having biological children or not; we just got swept up in the whirlwind of fertility treatments. After this last miscarriage in August 2019, we decided my body has been through enough and this must be God’s sign for us to focus on adoption.  Because of all the expenses associated with IVF and fertility treatments not being covered by insurance, it had hit us hard financially.  As soon as we found our adoption agency, we started saving instantly.  However, our family consisting of being a public school teacher and active duty military service member, it has taken us some time to accrue to get started in the adoption process.  Additionally, the government had a shutdown and my husband’s military branch was on furlough for a substantial amount of time and we did not receive a paycheck. Once we got back on our feet, we did everything we could to build our adoption savings.  We held a catfish benefit dinner, participated in three seasonal craft shows (while selling any additional items online), hosted a garage sale and Lee would work side jobs performing handy-man jobs as well as building fences.  Once COVID-19 hit and quarantine mandates were in place, it had affected our fundraising efforts and everything we had planned for was on pause.  Still to this day, we are not allowed to do any fundraisers in our area due to the large group restrictions.  We tried to get creative and held a few online fundraiser events such as selling adoption supporter t-shirts, active wear, jewelry and a skin care and make-up lines.  Currently, we noticed a need for teachers like myself as well as our students to be protected with the upcoming school year, so we have built and designed customizable hand sanitizer stations to sell. Despite all these efforts, we remain short financially.  Our agency has urged us to come up with the remaining amount otherwise we will have to continue to wait to be matched.

 Lee and I both have a large extended family, so family values and relationships are important to us.  We have 5 nieces and 1 rambunctious little boy that is our Godchild.  Our lives are centered around children-both family and close friends; and it is evident how much we light up when we get to interact with them.  There’s no desire greater than of ours wanting and hoping to become parents.  We have had a very long and sad journey but we remain hopeful that we will one day soon get to accomplish this dream of the joy of parenthood. 

Feel free to visit our blog to stay up to date on our story.  It is a work in progress: https://journeytofindingourstork.weebly.com/