HELP US GROW OUR FAMILY
Donation protected
OUR STORY
Our story begins back in 1994 while I was attending college in Georgia. A classmate of mine introduced me to Kim and we hit it off right away. She was funny, smart and beautiful. She kept me on my toes for sure. We dated for 2 years and while I felt things getting serious and going towards marriage, unfortunately Kim felt she was too young to make that next step. She was 21 and I was 23 and we went our separate ways. I ended up moving back to Florida in 1999 to start over again and it wasn’t until 2008 while on Facebook one night that I came across Amy, the mutual friend that had originally connected Kim and I in the first place. I decided to friend request Amy and when she accepted that request, I immediately asked if she was still in touch with Kim. She said they hadn’t talked in a while but that she was friends with her on Facebook and that I should send Kim a note. After thinking about it for about 1 minute, I sprang into action and sent her a friend request and a private message asking how she has been and gave her my number to call me to catch up. We began talking almost every night and after a week or so, I felt that connection with her again as if we had never stopped talking for the 14 years we had been apart. Not long after we reconnected, she invited me to Georgia to spend her Birthday weekend with her and her twin sister. Ever since then, we didn’t spend a day without speaking. About a year later, I was finally able to convince Kim to move to Florida to be with me. I owned a house at the time and the market was in bad shape and there would be no way for me to sell the house and move up to her.
We married in 2010 and began planning our life together including plans to add children to our new family. We tried for over a year and when we were unable to get pregnant on our own, we decided to see a specialist and see if one of us had any medical issues that might keep us from getting pregnant naturally. Turns out that there were issues and we would have to go through IVF. After our first attempt with IVF, we got the amazing news that we were pregnant with twins. Our life couldn't be any better and we were floating through our days until the day we found out there was a problem. While out to dinner one night with Kim’s twin and her husband, Kim felt something abnormal and so she called the night service for her doctor and when they called back, Kim told them what was going on and they told her to get to the hospital immediately. Once in triage at Winnie Palmer, after all the tests were performed, we were informed that Kim’s cervix had shortened and we would need to see our doctor first thing the next morning. We went in to see our doctor that next morning and after they performed an ultrasound, they could see there were some issues with our pregnancy and called ahead to Winnie Palmer to alert them that we were coming directly there at that moment. Kim was put on bedrest and was in for a long stay at the hospital from this time forward. As we were already 25 weeks pregnant, this was a scary situation and not something we signed up for.
We ended up staying for about a week in which time, we lost one of our boys, Connor to a still birth and our other son went through emergency C-Section 2 days later. He lived for about 3 days in the NICU and had severe issues and it didn’t look good. We were contacted one night around 3AM that we needed to rush to the NICU due to complications. Our son, Colton was experiencing cranial bleeding in the brain and would not live much longer without assistance. We waited painstakingly for our beloved son to pass and then spent the next couple hours saying our goodbyes to him.
Kim and I were devastated and after some time passed, we decided to try again. We became pregnant again with another boy and we were very hopeful this time, still hurting from our last loss. A couple months into this pregnancy we found out that our son had some fluid building up around his body between the uterus lining and his head and extremities. After more testing we found out that it was a chromosomal defect and that he would not make it through the full pregnancy. As you can imagine, we were devastated.
At this point we have spent a large sum of money and were quickly running out of options. We decided to give IVF one more try and decided to do a whole new retrieval and have the embryos tested to make sure of which ones were healthy and which would have issues. We found out that of the 8 embryos, only one was healthy. We implanted the one healthy embryo and prayed for the best result possible. Yet again, we were devastated with the news that the pregnancy didn’t take hold. By now, as you can imagine, we felt like this would never happen for us. Why us, we are good people trying to bring life into this world and have a happy life like billions of other people in this world.
Throughout our struggles we have never once thought of giving up, although it has been tough to move forward at times. Realizing that we still had 3 embryos left from our original IVF, we decided to go through another IVF. Once thawed, only 2 embryos’ survived. We had both embryos’ implanted and hoped and prayed for the best. After waiting 11 days, it was finally time to take the pregnancy blood test and find out if we would be parents. Unfortunately, neither embryo took and we were back to square one again. At this point, we are completely depleted of funds and things feel hopeless.
As you can imagine, we are exhausted from the process and have decided to go another route. Because Kim is now 41 and the eggs may not be as viable as they were years before, Kim and I have decided to use a donor egg. We have no more funds to move forward with this and we need help. We both feel very awkward about asking for help to fund our next IVF but we have run out of options and we desperately want to complete our dream of becoming parents and having a family of our own.
Here is the budget breakdown on our IVF:
IVF procedure itself & monitoring costs - $18,000.00
the medications - $500 - $1,000
the embryos storage and handling costs - $750.00 flat fee for freezing embryos & $60.00 a month for freezing. We are asking for help to raise the $19,500 needed to make our dream of a family come true. Anything you can contribute would be amazing and very much appreciated.
Our story begins back in 1994 while I was attending college in Georgia. A classmate of mine introduced me to Kim and we hit it off right away. She was funny, smart and beautiful. She kept me on my toes for sure. We dated for 2 years and while I felt things getting serious and going towards marriage, unfortunately Kim felt she was too young to make that next step. She was 21 and I was 23 and we went our separate ways. I ended up moving back to Florida in 1999 to start over again and it wasn’t until 2008 while on Facebook one night that I came across Amy, the mutual friend that had originally connected Kim and I in the first place. I decided to friend request Amy and when she accepted that request, I immediately asked if she was still in touch with Kim. She said they hadn’t talked in a while but that she was friends with her on Facebook and that I should send Kim a note. After thinking about it for about 1 minute, I sprang into action and sent her a friend request and a private message asking how she has been and gave her my number to call me to catch up. We began talking almost every night and after a week or so, I felt that connection with her again as if we had never stopped talking for the 14 years we had been apart. Not long after we reconnected, she invited me to Georgia to spend her Birthday weekend with her and her twin sister. Ever since then, we didn’t spend a day without speaking. About a year later, I was finally able to convince Kim to move to Florida to be with me. I owned a house at the time and the market was in bad shape and there would be no way for me to sell the house and move up to her.
We married in 2010 and began planning our life together including plans to add children to our new family. We tried for over a year and when we were unable to get pregnant on our own, we decided to see a specialist and see if one of us had any medical issues that might keep us from getting pregnant naturally. Turns out that there were issues and we would have to go through IVF. After our first attempt with IVF, we got the amazing news that we were pregnant with twins. Our life couldn't be any better and we were floating through our days until the day we found out there was a problem. While out to dinner one night with Kim’s twin and her husband, Kim felt something abnormal and so she called the night service for her doctor and when they called back, Kim told them what was going on and they told her to get to the hospital immediately. Once in triage at Winnie Palmer, after all the tests were performed, we were informed that Kim’s cervix had shortened and we would need to see our doctor first thing the next morning. We went in to see our doctor that next morning and after they performed an ultrasound, they could see there were some issues with our pregnancy and called ahead to Winnie Palmer to alert them that we were coming directly there at that moment. Kim was put on bedrest and was in for a long stay at the hospital from this time forward. As we were already 25 weeks pregnant, this was a scary situation and not something we signed up for.
We ended up staying for about a week in which time, we lost one of our boys, Connor to a still birth and our other son went through emergency C-Section 2 days later. He lived for about 3 days in the NICU and had severe issues and it didn’t look good. We were contacted one night around 3AM that we needed to rush to the NICU due to complications. Our son, Colton was experiencing cranial bleeding in the brain and would not live much longer without assistance. We waited painstakingly for our beloved son to pass and then spent the next couple hours saying our goodbyes to him.
Kim and I were devastated and after some time passed, we decided to try again. We became pregnant again with another boy and we were very hopeful this time, still hurting from our last loss. A couple months into this pregnancy we found out that our son had some fluid building up around his body between the uterus lining and his head and extremities. After more testing we found out that it was a chromosomal defect and that he would not make it through the full pregnancy. As you can imagine, we were devastated.
At this point we have spent a large sum of money and were quickly running out of options. We decided to give IVF one more try and decided to do a whole new retrieval and have the embryos tested to make sure of which ones were healthy and which would have issues. We found out that of the 8 embryos, only one was healthy. We implanted the one healthy embryo and prayed for the best result possible. Yet again, we were devastated with the news that the pregnancy didn’t take hold. By now, as you can imagine, we felt like this would never happen for us. Why us, we are good people trying to bring life into this world and have a happy life like billions of other people in this world.
Throughout our struggles we have never once thought of giving up, although it has been tough to move forward at times. Realizing that we still had 3 embryos left from our original IVF, we decided to go through another IVF. Once thawed, only 2 embryos’ survived. We had both embryos’ implanted and hoped and prayed for the best. After waiting 11 days, it was finally time to take the pregnancy blood test and find out if we would be parents. Unfortunately, neither embryo took and we were back to square one again. At this point, we are completely depleted of funds and things feel hopeless.
As you can imagine, we are exhausted from the process and have decided to go another route. Because Kim is now 41 and the eggs may not be as viable as they were years before, Kim and I have decided to use a donor egg. We have no more funds to move forward with this and we need help. We both feel very awkward about asking for help to fund our next IVF but we have run out of options and we desperately want to complete our dream of becoming parents and having a family of our own.
Here is the budget breakdown on our IVF:
IVF procedure itself & monitoring costs - $18,000.00
the medications - $500 - $1,000
the embryos storage and handling costs - $750.00 flat fee for freezing embryos & $60.00 a month for freezing. We are asking for help to raise the $19,500 needed to make our dream of a family come true. Anything you can contribute would be amazing and very much appreciated.
Organizer
Eric Freeman
Organizer
Altamonte Springs, FL
