Our Story

A little bit about us...

Our daughter, Ava, was born on February 11, 2015. We were standing in the hospital room and watched as another woman gave birth to her. Ava was placed immediately into our arms and we started our skin to skin contact. After almost a year of peeing on ovulation sticks, perfectly timed sex in those optimal baby making positions, we were not pregnant. It felt like all of our friends just smiled at their husbands and got pregnant. So, why couldn’t we? Were we just destined to not have a child? We literally contemplated this each month… for three years.

The journey was a long difficult one. Emily had hundreds of vials of blood drawn and vaginal ultrasounds, was put under general anesthesia several times, had biopsies, clomid attempts, IUIs, IVF cycles, failed IVF cycles, egg retrievals, embryo transfers, a hsg procedure, a colposcopy and a hysteroscopy, three times weekly doctor appointments, and had more hormone injections, suppositories, pills and vitamins than we could even count.

Gregg was Emily's nurse and gave her two to four shots per night. He hated how much her body had to endure. It was so hard for him to watch her physically and emotionally struggle month after month after month with no positive results. He wanted to fix it all. He wanted to take away her sadness and hopelessness, but truthfully he was also feeling these things.

We found ourselves running out of options.

Our insurance covered nothing. We were burning through our savings. We kept thinking IVF had to work. This is what people do who can’t get pregnant. We had no idea that IVF doesn't always work and that our infertility journey would lead us to… surrogacy. We worked with an agency and found the most incredible woman who was willing to carry our baby for us.

February 10, 2015 was the 10 year anniversary of Emily dad’s death. Ava was born at 12:28am on the 11th.  28 minutes later. After three years of trying to have a baby this is when our daughter was born. She is named Ava in memory of her grandpa.