Our family-building journey has never been an easy one, but becoming parents has always been the greatest gift of our lives. My husband and I are incredibly blessed to have two children, and they have filled our lives with more love than we ever could have imagined. For as long as we can remember, we have dreamed of having one more child and completing our family. My first pregnancy and delivery were extremely difficult. During the birth of my first child, I suffered a uterine artery rupture, a life-threatening complication that resulted in a two-week ICU stay. It was a terrifying experience, and it changed the way I understood pregnancy and childbirth. Despite that experience, when we became pregnant with our second child, I desperately wanted to give our first child a sibling. That pregnancy brought another tremendous challenge. I was told that I should terminate the pregnancy with my son. It was one of the most painful and frightening things I have ever been asked to consider. I could not give up on him. I chose to continue the pregnancy and fought through everything that followed. Thankfully, by the grace of G-d, our son was born healthy. He is here today, and I will forever be grateful that I had the strength to keep going when the road felt impossible. After everything we had been through, we still held onto the dream of having a third child. In October 2025, my husband and I finally began trying again. We were hopeful that maybe, after all the heartbreak and uncertainty, we would get the chance to grow our family one more time. Three days before Thanksgiving, that dream was interrupted in a way we never could have imagined: I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since my diagnosis, my life has changed completely. I have undergone breast cancer surgeries and have been dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath of treatment. I am currently taking hormone-suppressing medication, including tamoxifen, and my doctors have advised me not to carry another pregnancy because of the potential risk of cancer recurrence. The idea that carrying a child could put my life at risk is devastating. After everything I have already endured to bring my children into this world, it is incredibly difficult to accept that I cannot safely carry the child we have dreamed of. Surrogacy is the path that would allow us to pursue that dream without asking me to make an impossible choice between my health and having another child. We have begun learning about the surrogacy process and trying to understand what it would entail medically, emotionally, legally, and financially. We know that it is a tremendous undertaking, and we do not take for granted what a gift a surrogate would be to our family. We are prepared to approach the process with gratitude, respect, honesty, and an enormous amount of care. Our children are the center of our world. We want them to grow up knowing the incredible bond of having siblings and to experience the same kind of love, connection, and family that has meant so much to us. We dream of another child not because our family is incomplete without one, but because we have so much love left to give. We have always pictured one more little person around our dinner table, one more laugh in our home, one more child to love and raise alongside our two children. We are fortunate to have a loving support system of family and friends who have stood beside us through my cancer diagnosis, surgeries, treatment, and everything our family has faced. Their support has carried us through some of the darkest moments of this journey. We know that surrogacy will require that same kind of community, and we are grateful to have people around us who will support us emotionally and practically along the way. Our greatest hope for this journey is a healthy baby and a healthy surrogate. We understand that there are many unknowns and that surrogacy is a deeply personal journey for everyone involved. We hope to build a relationship based on trust, communication, mutual respect, and gratitude. More than anything, we hope to approach the experience with humility and never lose sight of the incredible person who would be helping us make our family-building dream possible. Financially, however, this dream feels almost impossible to reach on our own. Surrogacy is extraordinarily expensive, and at this point in our lives, we simply cannot afford it. I have been unable to work since January 2026 because of complications from my breast cancer surgeries and the challenges of adjusting to my medication. We are already carrying the financial and emotional weight of cancer treatment, and the cost of surrogacy is far beyond what we could take on ourselves. We have fought so hard for our family. I fought for my life after my first delivery. I fought for my son when I was told I should not continue his pregnancy. And now I am fighting cancer while trying to hold onto the dream of bringing one more child into our family. I never imagined that after everything I had survived, the thing standing between us and our dream of a third child would be something as simple and devastating as being unable to afford it. Receiving this grant would mean far more to our family than financial assistance. It would give us a chance to keep believing that our family-building journey is not over. It would give us the opportunity to pursue another child without putting my health at risk, and it would turn a dream that currently feels completely out of reach into something real. After everything our family has been through, we know better than most that life can change in an instant. We also know that sometimes, when you are given the chance, you have to keep fighting for the future you believe in. That is what we are asking for now: the chance to keep fighting for ours. How we'll use the funds: financial assistance towards surrogacy costs.