Baby Zappala IVF Fund

We are Katrina and Joshua. A partnership that started well over a decade ago, grew into an unbreakable bond, and is now on the journey to turn that bond into a family.  Lately, that journey has gotten quite bumpy. Here is our story...


For those that do not know Kat & Shua, we met at UCSB in 2005, through great mutual friends, at an all too stereotypical Halloween party. Over the last decade, we have built a team that has taken on so many of life's challenges together. Conquering urban scavenger races as the Gaucho Locos, pushing each other through the early developments of our careers, moving across the state while navigating highway 5 in a massive U-Haul, and countless adventures exploring where ever we could get to travel wise. These trials have only strengthened our resilience as a team, proven our togetherness as a couple, and positioned us to deal with the recent difficulties of "adulting". 

After over 3 years of trying the old fashioned way, we became aware that our chances of naturally conceiving a child had become about 1-2%. This is all despite the fact that at all the fertility doctors visits, all of the blood work, the ultrasounds and various probing tests found nothing hindering our chances of conceiving. We are both young, healthy, fertile, and fully functional. Yet, over the last 3+ years we have tried month after month, only to struggle with the sadness, anger, and depression of the misfortune every 28 days. 

Recently, we took the next step and went through the process of Intrauterine insemination (IUI), which is by no means fun, cheap, or non-invasive. This process was very emotionally, physically, and financially strenuous. It was also unsuccessful and left us truly baffled and worn. Without any true reason, we simply could not get pregnant and expand the team, the bond, the love. 

With great conversation, exploration, and communication, we realized that we truly want to have a child, and we're ready to proceed to the next available option, In Vetro Fertilization (IVF).

IVF involves a much more serious and invasive process, and of course has an even bigger price tag. We are already anxious to begin the treatments that will probably be the most mentally difficult journey we have had to date. This being said, we would like to ask our friends and family to help lessen some of this stress by contributing to the costs. We are fortunate enough to have some savings tucked away through the years, but medical insurance does not cover a cent of the IVF process and it is adding to our already staggering fertility treatment bills.

With obvious emotional gravity, months of stress stacked on top of each other, the struggles wore on our team in a way that no race, no course, no challenge in our 13 year run as a team ever had. With as much difficulty as it is for most people to be vulnerable and ask for help, we realize that our team must phone a few friends, family members, and even strangers who our journey resonates with, and ask for your assistance. Please donate what you can, as everything helps towards our final costs. 

Thank you, 

Kat and Shua,

The Zappalas