Wishing for Baby Matthews Journey

After many years and suffering great loss.

We have embryos waiting and would love more than anything to have a beautiful baby in our arms. ❤️

We would be so grateful if you would please consider donating to our surrogacy fund.

Update 3/24/2026: We are starting over searching for a surrogate. Update 3/1/2026: Our match backed out during legal due to insurance change no longer surrogate friendly.

Update12/25/2025:

Getting things checked off our list -Phycological clearance final meeting will be completed Dec 29th, Background check done, next will be legal contract then transfer.

Update 12/14/2025:

We have officially completed medical clearance on Dec 9th and are one step closer.

Update 11/15/2025:

We had our consultation with our fertility clinic Oct 29th with our surrogate. Since then, we have started working through the process of getting medical & phycological clearance and obtained a lawyer that gave us a checklist to complete.

We are almost done with the tasks needed getting much closer to moving forward with embryo transfer planned for the beginning of 2026.

Our Story:

Our fertility journey started in 2018, after sixteen years of marriage. Michelle had two boys from a previous marriage. Carl had no biological children of his own. We wanted nothing more than to have one child together. We started with fertility testing for both of us, followed by a tubal surgery for me, so we could begin trying to conceive.

After trying naturally for six years, we were told my fallopian tubes were too short and that I had a diminished ovarian reserve. The recommendation was to pursue IVF with donor eggs.

We moved forward and selected an egg donor at the beginning of 2024 and created embryos in Nevada in December. We then cryo-shipped them to our fertility clinic in Oregon.

Seven years into our journey, the first embryo transfer failed in January of 2025, and our second transfer was done in April. On April 29th, we finally got our first positive pregnancy test.

It wasn’t long before we ended up in the hospital; I was bleeding. Hospital tests were inconclusive. Only a few days later, we were back in the hospital due to heavy bleeding. A gestational hemorrhage was found. Over the next few weeks, we had four more ultrasounds; blood tests showed no chromosomal issues. Each appointment, we had tears of joy and hearts full of love seeing our baby jumping, rolling over, and hearing a strong heartbeat was all reassuring.

We were referred to the highest level of specialist in Oregon at OHSU for additional imaging because the gestational sac was very low, and a blood clot was in the way of imaging.

A full team of specialists reviewed the findings. My diagnosis was cervical ectopic pregnancy with the cervix thinned to one centimeter and bulging, placenta percreta, and multiple large fibroids inside and outside the uterus. Doctors told us the risk of continuing pregnancy was too great; it was a matter of time before a rupture. In order to save my life, I was admitted to the hospital for an MRI, a uterine artery block, and emergency surgery. Within forty-eight hours of our imaging appointment, I was out of surgery, and our baby Anya Dakota Matthews was gone.

Our baby was perfect, but there was no way to save her at thirteen weeks and one day of gestation.

Our Angel Baby girl took a piece of us with her on July 4th, 2025.

We lost our baby and our ability to try to conceive again.

We live in Oregon and are hoping to find a surrogate close to home so we can be actively present and have a close relationship throughout this process.

We plan to donate any unused embryos to another family to give hope to someone else who is struggling with infertility, just as we did.

We still have six embryos and are working to come up with the funds for surrogacy.

Any form of support helps.

Please share our fundraiser and consider donating.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story.

Wishing for Baby Matthews,

Carl & Michelle Matthews