Help the Hogers Adopt!
Donation protected
We are so excited you are here to read about our adoption dream and partner with us! Please settle in for a long saga, mostly because Emily can't tell a short story. To catch you up on how we arrived here, we must go back 5 years. We began trying for a baby in 2013, full of optimism and excitement that turned into heartbreak as we kept failing over time. In 2014, Emily established care with a fertility doctor and proceeded with the conventional treatments of medications and surgery, which were not successful in helping us make a baby.
Our next step was to establish care with an excellent fertility center. Over the next several years, we continuously pursued different fertility treatments as guided by our compassionate reproductive endocrinologists. We were thrilled to learn on Thanksgiving 2015 that we were expecting, and had the happiest time of our lives only to lose our baby one month later. We grieved, then eventually gathered our strength to try again. We ultimately conceived again with fertility treatment, but lost our second child in June 2017. Fertility treatments for us were a cycle of elation and devastation that took quite a toll on our hearts, lives, finances, and Emily's body. In short, this time was the pits.
After years of this, we came to the decision together to stop medical treatments. Instead, we have happily chosen to become parents through adoption! Adoption is a dream that we first shared with each other on a fall hike during our engagement (10 years ago... yikes). Through this season of infertility we have had many long discussions about when to adopt, but we knew it needed to come in its own time. We were thrilled when we both felt the time is now! This process brings its own challenges, but we are excited to work through them and find a child to welcome into our family. We have enrolled with Adoptions from the Heart, a large, long-standing open adoption agency on the East coast. We really admire the counseling and support they provide to birth parents. As their clients, we also appreciate the education, support, and legal expertise they provide for us.
We weren't sure what to set as our goal for fundraising, because who in the world really knows what to write for these things? It is hard to predict the exact cost of an adoption due to varying legal fees. We decided to set $35,000 as our approximation based on the estimated costs that our agency provides. We don't expect to raise the entire amount, but after the financial burden of infertility treatments we felt we needed to ask our community to partner with us toward our adoption goal. We feel incredibly honored to have so many wonderful people who have offered us their help throughout all of this. It often feels like our whole community is working toward helping us become parents. It feels right to call on that community for help now. We believe that in addition to making our dream come true, it also benefits the whole community for a child who needs a home to have one. Any amount you can offer will humble us. We also ask that you leave our child a note here so that someday we can show them the community that lovingly welcomed them home.
We would also love to have your support, good thoughts, and prayers throughout this process. We know that this will take a village and we are fortunate to have such supportive family and friends!
Love,
Mark and Emily
Our next step was to establish care with an excellent fertility center. Over the next several years, we continuously pursued different fertility treatments as guided by our compassionate reproductive endocrinologists. We were thrilled to learn on Thanksgiving 2015 that we were expecting, and had the happiest time of our lives only to lose our baby one month later. We grieved, then eventually gathered our strength to try again. We ultimately conceived again with fertility treatment, but lost our second child in June 2017. Fertility treatments for us were a cycle of elation and devastation that took quite a toll on our hearts, lives, finances, and Emily's body. In short, this time was the pits.
After years of this, we came to the decision together to stop medical treatments. Instead, we have happily chosen to become parents through adoption! Adoption is a dream that we first shared with each other on a fall hike during our engagement (10 years ago... yikes). Through this season of infertility we have had many long discussions about when to adopt, but we knew it needed to come in its own time. We were thrilled when we both felt the time is now! This process brings its own challenges, but we are excited to work through them and find a child to welcome into our family. We have enrolled with Adoptions from the Heart, a large, long-standing open adoption agency on the East coast. We really admire the counseling and support they provide to birth parents. As their clients, we also appreciate the education, support, and legal expertise they provide for us.
We weren't sure what to set as our goal for fundraising, because who in the world really knows what to write for these things? It is hard to predict the exact cost of an adoption due to varying legal fees. We decided to set $35,000 as our approximation based on the estimated costs that our agency provides. We don't expect to raise the entire amount, but after the financial burden of infertility treatments we felt we needed to ask our community to partner with us toward our adoption goal. We feel incredibly honored to have so many wonderful people who have offered us their help throughout all of this. It often feels like our whole community is working toward helping us become parents. It feels right to call on that community for help now. We believe that in addition to making our dream come true, it also benefits the whole community for a child who needs a home to have one. Any amount you can offer will humble us. We also ask that you leave our child a note here so that someday we can show them the community that lovingly welcomed them home.
We would also love to have your support, good thoughts, and prayers throughout this process. We know that this will take a village and we are fortunate to have such supportive family and friends!
Love,
Mark and Emily
Organizer
Mark Hoger
Organizer
Chambersburg, PA
