Be a piece of our IVF Journey

Baby Mayer Puzzle Piece Fundraiser Our Journey Our journey to grow our family has been longer and more difficult than we ever imagined. We are so grateful to our family and friends who have been there to support us through this challenging journey. Over the past two years, we have gone through five egg retrievals, each time holding onto hope that it would finally be the one that worked. Each cycle brought anticipation, and each loss of embryos brought deep heartbreak. After our 4th retrieval, searching for answers we underwent another endometriosis surgery and committed to months of medications, specialists, supplements, and lifestyle changes focused on improving both egg and sperm quality before attempting our 5th retrieval. We poured everything we had—physically, emotionally, mentally, and especially financially—into this process. We really felt this last retrieval would be our breakthrough! Despite all of this, we have not been able to create any embryos. Our doctors feel Brittany’s endometriosis has deeply affected her egg quality despite surgery, preventing our embryos developing. We have seen this both through IVF, and through multiple chemical pregnancies with medicated natural cycles. While we considered many options including embryo adoption, traditional adoption, and donor eggs, moving to donor eggs felt like the best next step for us taking into consideration time and expenses. Coming to the decision to move forward with donor eggs has not been easy. It is not the path we originally dreamed of, and it comes with a mix of grief, but also hope. But it also gives us something we have been holding onto through it all—a real chance to finally bring home a baby. In addition to moving forward with donor eggs, we have decided to switch clinics in order to help keep costs down as much as possible. Using donor eggs at our local clinic would be over $42,000. However, switching clinics comes with the added complexity and expense of traveling for both embryo creation, monitoring and embryo transfer. The added cost of using donor eggs comes after already spending over $50,000 over the past two years for our past IVF cycles, the cost of specialists, medications, etc. We have been stretched further financially than we ever could have imagined, and we are so grateful that God has always provided for us, even in situations we didn’t know how we would get through. How You Can Help This next step brings significant and unexpected financial challenges. If you feel led to support us, here is a breakdown of the costs involved: Donor Eggs: $20,000 Travel (once for embryo creation, a few times for monitoring and once for embryo transfer) : $4,000 Medications: ~$6,000 Total: ~$30,000 We are hoping to fundraise $20,000 to help us meet this extraordinarily large financial goal to be able to move forward with the next step in building our family. If you feel led to help support the next step in our IVF journey, you can purchase a puzzle piece for $20. You can buy just one piece, or as many as you’d like. Your name will be placed on the back of the puzzle piece(s) you purchase. If you choose to buy several pieces, you can include a short message to be put on the back of the pieces you have purchased. Every puzzle piece purchased is a tangible piece of our journey—representing hope, love, and the support surrounding us as we take this next step. Once our puzzle has been completed, we will frame and hang it in the future nursery for Baby Mayer. This will be a beautiful keepsake for us to cherish forever! We will always look back and be reminded of your generosity and investment in our family, and Baby Mayer will know how loved and cherished they were even before they were born! And you will be a part of completing the missing piece to our puzzle! Your support, whether through donating, sharing our story, or simply keeping us in your prayers, truly means more to us than words can express. Thank you for being a part of our journey! With love, The Mayers Kevin, Brittany and Walter