Hi, we're Cody and Tommy! We met in Australia (I'm an Aussie from Sydney, Tommy is American from St Louis), and after finding each other across twelve thousand miles, we built a life together across two countries before settling here in Missouri in 2020. We've built something really incredible together, and we are so ready to grow and share it! Our path to parenthood was always going to look a little different. As a same-sex couple, we chose gestational surrogacy, and we didn't arrive at that decision quickly. We spent years researching quietly, carefully, and at times obsessively, trying to make sense of a process with very little clarity. Every answer opened three more questions! It has felt like a second full-time job on top of two already busy careers, and so much of it has meant making decisions that feel less like choices and more like calculations. What I can only describe as value engineering your way toward parenthood is something nobody truly prepares you for. But here we are, and so much has happened! We signed with our agency, made our first major deposit, and began the medical side of this journey in earnest. Our donor's egg retrieval was a huge success, with nineteen eggs! We were over the moon. Then came embryo creation and testing, and the numbers fell away one by one. From nineteen eggs, we have one viable embryo. One. It's hard to describe what it feels like to have everything you've worked toward for years resting on a single, tiny possibility. We're matching with our surrogate now, with transfer on the horizon, and we're holding onto that little embryo with every ounce of hope we have. Here's where we truly need your help. Getting to this point has taken absolutely everything we set aside. Every dollar of our savings is now gone, and the next stage of our journey, from the transfer itself through the pregnancy to bringing our baby home, is still unfunded. We have no other source to draw from. There's no family fortune, no insurance coverage, and no backup plan waiting in the wings. Our only options are high-interest loans that would follow us, and our child, for years, or the generosity of friends, family, and the incredible strangers who find their way to this page. And if this transfer doesn't succeed, we'd face nearly $30,000 more just to start again. Every contribution, big or small, carries us forward from here, and gives us a safety net so that a setback doesn't become the end of the road. And when our baby does arrive, we know exactly the life we're bringing them into. We plan to move in with Tommy's sister, her husband, and their four kids, so our little one wakes up every day surrounded by cousins who will feel like siblings, in the way that only happens when kids grow up truly together. Close friends of ours are deliberately starting families at the same time too, building a chosen peer group for our kids to grow alongside. We're constructing a village, intentionally and with so much love, and if you're reading this, you're part of it. If you're able to give, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you can't right now, sharing this page means just as much. Every share helps our story reach someone who might be able to help. We are so ready to be dads. We just need a little help getting there!