Our baby girl, Celise, came raging into this world on March 8th, International Women’s Day. She was delivered via emergency c-section and is currently fighting for her life in a NICU in Lviv, Ukraine. She is battling pneumonia, pulmonary valve stenosis, and a vascular ring. Boston Children’s Hospital has the ability to save her life, but we are a long way from home. To watch her struggle when we know Boston can help is beyond heartbreaking, and to go through this after years of infertility is devastating. Her father Dillon and I are asking for help in bringing her home so that she can have the life-saving surgery she desperately needs.

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To know who Celise is, you first need to know her parents. Dillon and Mason met during college while studying abroad, became fast friends, and stayed in touch after the school year finished. A few months later when Dillon decided to visit the US, they made plans to meet up. When he saw her waiting for him at baggage claim he ran over, scooped her up in a big hug, and told her she’d be in love with him by the end of the week. She had no idea how right he was. Two months later she moved to England to be with him, and two years later they were married.

They were still young, so starting a family wasn’t the first thing on their list. There’s plenty of time, right? But by the time they were ready, pregnancy just didn’t work out as they hoped.

One month before they planned to start trying for a baby, they found out they were already pregnant! But that immense joy soon turned to heartbreak as they found out they lost the pregnancy just a few weeks later. They tried to stay positive with thoughts like “at least we know we can get pregnant” and “miscarriages are so common, I’m sure everything will be ok”.

Cue Morgan Freeman: Everything was not ok.

What followed was 7 years of losses, failed IVF procedures, and anguish. Mason went on to have 6 more losses with her body, experienced 2 failed embryo transfers, and endured 6 grueling egg retrievals. After exhausting all known medical interventions, she knew her body would never be able to give them the child they so desperately wanted to meet. Following a lot of hard discussions, they decided to pursue surrogacy with their remaining embryos.

The hardships didn’t end there, as they went through two more failed transfers before finally getting the good news they’d been dreaming about for nearly a decade—their surrogate was pregnant and the baby had a heartbeat. That heartbeat was the most glorious sound they had ever heard.

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Everything was going well until it wasn’t. At 37 weeks, our beautiful surrogate was rushed to an emergency c-section due to Celise’s lack of movement and breathing. When she was born, she let out one tiny scream before needing to be intubated immediately. They discovered she has pneumonia and a few congenital heart defects. Despite their best efforts, she is still struggling to improve, and her heart condition is getting worse. We can’t hold her, we can’t look into her eyes, we can’t even kiss her little nose. We just want to save our baby girl’s life.

Boston Children’s Hospital would be covered by our insurance, but unfortunately Celise can only make it there with a medical evacuation. We have been given an estimate of $120,000 to $140,000 for a life flight that can support a newborn on a ventilator, which is an impossible number for us to afford, despite calling in every favor known to man. We have already exhausted all of our finances and all of our fertility benefits just to get to this point, and we very literally can’t afford her surgery outside of the US.

We know how to get her home. We know how to save her life. We are desperately asking for help so that money isn’t the reason we lose our baby girl. If you can’t help with a donation, please help by sharing Celise’s story. We would be forever grateful.

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Getting Celise home is just the first step in the journey. We have a long road to recovery, and may need to be away from home for quite a while. Any extra funds will go towards covering the following: