Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read our story. Some of you may remember that I originally created this fundraiser back in 2022. At the time, my husband and I had been married for 16 years and had already spent years navigating infertility. We had completed three unsuccessful IUI treatments, and our doctors told us that if one final IUI wasn't successful, our next step would be IVF. Knowing we couldn't afford IVF on our own, I created this fundraiser in preparation for what we thought was inevitable. Then something incredible happened. That fourth IUI worked. After years of appointments, medications, blood draws, ultrasounds, injections, and endless hope, we were finally pregnant. In March 2023, we welcomed our beautiful little boy into the world. He has been the greatest blessing we could have ever imagined. Because our miracle arrived before we needed IVF, I updated this fundraiser to say it was no longer needed. Today, I'm reopening it because our journey to grow our family isn't over. Our story actually began almost two decades ago. We stopped preventing pregnancy shortly after we were married. After four years without conceiving, we sought help from our doctors. What followed was a long and often heartbreaking road of fertility testing, ovulation monitoring, timed intercourse, Clomid, Letrozole, and years of hoping each month would finally be the month. At one point, after nearly two years of treatment, I was scheduled to begin IUI. Instead, I was told that because we were still young, we should simply keep trying naturally. Discouraged and overwhelmed, I stepped away from fertility treatment for nearly eight years. In 2021, I found the courage to try again. Because of COVID, our local hospital wasn't performing IUI procedures, so we continued with medication until we were referred to a larger fertility clinic. There, we completed four rounds of IUI. The first three were unsuccessful. The fourth gave us the miracle we had been praying for—our son. Following our doctor's recommendations, we waited until after his first birthday before trying for another baby. We hoped that because we had conceived once, maybe it would happen again. Unfortunately, it hasn't. After more than a year of trying on our own, we returned to our fertility specialist. We completed four more rounds of medicated IUI between February and June 2026. Every appointment brought encouraging news. My follicles looked healthy. Everything appeared promising. Yet month after month, every pregnancy test was negative. After our final unsuccessful cycle, I met with my doctor to discuss our next steps. Because of my age and my diminished ovarian reserve, she recommended that we move to IVF. She explained that additional IUI cycles or fertility medications alone are unlikely to improve our chances. While hearing that IVF is our best option gives us hope, it also brings an overwhelming financial burden. Our estimated cost for one IVF cycle with a fresh embryo transfer is approximately $19,000, not including the cost of medications. Even after insurance, this is far beyond what we can manage on our own. Because my ovarian reserve continues to decline, time is no longer on our side. We don't want to look back years from now wondering if we missed our chance to grow our family simply because we couldn't afford IVF. Asking for help is one of the hardest things we've ever done. We've always tried to carry this journey ourselves, but we've reached a point where we simply can't do it alone. This journey has now been part of our lives for nearly 20 years. From a 20-year-old newlywed dreaming of starting a family to now being in my 40s and cherishing our miracle son, our dream has never changed. Seeing the world through his eyes has reminded us every day why we fought so hard to become parents in the first place. We hope for the chance to watch him become an amazing big brother and to welcome one more child into our family. If you're able to contribute, no matter the amount, your generosity will help us move one step closer to giving our son the sibling we've always dreamed of and to growing the family we've spent nearly two decades hoping for. If donating isn't possible, sharing our story with others would mean just as much. Every share, every prayer, every kind message, and every word of encouragement reminds us that we are not walking this journey alone. Thank you for taking the time to read our story, for believing in our family, and for giving us hope for what comes next. With love and gratitude, Ben and Isabelle