Alex's New Siblings!

BECAUSE IT TAKES A VILLAGE...

As many of you know, Kris and I were blessed with an addition to our family last year: Alexandra, born late last February. We feel exceedingly lucky, especially given the journey we traveled to have our beautiful daughter join us. Now we are expanding our family--by TWO! That's right, Kris is expecting twins, due in mid-April 2013. Or earlier, depending on when they decide to enter the world.

Of course, we are thrilled to be expecting twins. Two babies means double the love, double the joy, double the photo and video opportunities. But it also means an increase in exhaustion, weight gain, and potential complications for Kris.

That's why we're asking for help. 

COMPLICATING FACTORS
Kris and I had hoped to have children earlier in our marriage, but we got a late start on expanding our family after Kris was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA), a painful autoimmune disease, at 33, and two years later suffered a miscarriage. If I could, I would volunteer to fill in as baby mama (one of the perks of same-sex marriage), but I am unable to carry a child to term. Given Kris's health and our age, our doctor recommended In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) instead of artificial insemination this time around. IVF is expensive, but we decided to follow our doctor's advice because In-Vitro offered the best hope of minimizing the time Kris would have to be off her RA medication, which is not safe to take during pregnancy.

Our decision ended up being the right one--the average time it takes for someone our age to become pregnant via artificial insemination is 12 months, but Kris got pregnant on the first IVF cycle. This means she'll only be off her RA medication for a total of nine or ten months, rather than a year and a half or more.

Voluntarily taking on thousands of dollars of debt is always intimidating, but particularly so given the current economic climate. Now we face another issue--Kris's RA has remained unchecked for the past four months, while being pregnant with twins has decreased her energy and increased her weight gain, making being on her feet at work (she manages a gym) even more difficult than it already was. If we could afford it, she would cut back her hours. But we can't afford for her to scale back at work--we're still paying off the IVF costs and trying to save for the added expense of having TWO new babies join our family.

That's why we're reaching out to friends and family as we work to reach our goal: paying down our IVF debt and giving Kris extra time off work to keep her energy up and her pain levels down.

DONOR REWARDS
As Midwesterners, though, we don't want to ask for something for nothing. Lately we've been thinking of paring down our fairly sizable print book collection, so this seems like the perfect opportunity.

Here are our donor Reward Levels: $25 qualifies for 2 gently used titles from our household collection OR 1 of my books signed. $50 gives donors the chance to name a character in one of my future novels, plus books (2 used or 1 of mine). And $100 or more buys a character name and 3 books. (If you're overseas and would like a book sent to you, please add $10 to each level to cover international shipping.)

Everyone who gives, of course, will have our sincere gratitude and love.

AVAILABLE BOOKS
All of my books from Bella and Second Growth qualify for the $25 range; to see the list of our used lesbian and general fiction and non-fiction titles, visit the GoFundMe page on my blog: katechristie.wordpress.com.

THANK YOU...
Thank you for reading, and thank you in advance for considering helping out. We can't wait to introduce you all to the next additions to our family!

XOXO Kate, Kris, Alex, & the Players to be Named Later