Well.. it’s time to be vulnerable because this is our reality.

As some of you may know operation Baby Bailey has been in effect for a while.. what has felt like an eternity to us. Little did we know that “operation baby bailey” would lead to multiple operations. Jake and I have always imagined our story including children. HOWEVER, we never imagined it would be like this. 2 years of trying, 1 miscarriage, and one failed IUI later and we decided to take a more aggressive approach. In May we went to a fertility center to get some answers as to why it wasn’t happening despite very close ovulation monitoring. After many ultrasounds, vials of blood, and lots of tears we were told some unfortunate news. Jake and I are both carriers of a genetic disorder called Smith Lemli Optiz syndrome (SLOS). We were told by the genetic counselor that two people trying to conceive that happen to be carriers of the same genetic syndrome is VERY rare.

SLOS is characterized by slow growth before and after birth, small head (microcephaly), mild to moderate mental retardation and multiple birth defects including particular facial features, cleft palate, heart defects, fused second and third toes, extra fingers and toes and underdeveloped external genitals in males.

Because we both happen to be carriers, there is a 25% chance that our child will have the disorder, a 50% chance they will be a carrier, and 25% chance they will not be affected at all.

25%..

25% chance that we may have a child that does not even live past infancy.

We came into this fertility journey thinking we had a fertility issue but little did we know that we would be dealing with more of a genetic and ethical dilemma. Jake and I have decided to not play a game of chance and instead plan to proceed with IVF with preimplantation genetic testing to try and be responsible parents and bring a healthy life into the world. PGD involves removing a cell from an IVF embryo to test it for a specific genetic condition.

Sounds like a great solution right? Wellllll... there’s a problem. Jakes insurance considers this as an “elective” procedure. Therefore, anything fertility related is not covered by insurance.

We are looking at an out of pocket cost of at least $30,000 to finally become the parents that we've always wanted to be.

Never in a million years did we think that finances would prevent us from having a family.

So that’s what brings us here today.

If you are able to donate great! If not that’s fine too. Some words of encouragement would be just as nice as we go through this process.

I’ve included a Venmo code for those who aren’t comfortable donating on gofundme and would prefer to avoid the fees associated with it.