Hi everyone! My wife and I have been married since 2015 and have been trying to start a family since 2020. After more than a year without being able to conceive naturally, we decided to seek out help with a fertility specialist which ended up being far more involved than either of us thought it would ever be. We have gone through multiple IUI and IVF cycles and the hundreds of shots that come along with them, multiple non-successful implantations, a non-successful embryo transfer, a successful embryo transfer that resulted in a miscarriage at week 10, and thousands upon thousands of dollars spent in an effort to try and grow our family.
We have always known we wanted to adopt, and now we are turning our eyes towards that process as we see the difficulty in starting a family naturally as well as medically as a sign that perhaps we were always meant to make ourselves available to those in need of a loving home and family for their little ones. We know that these are trying times for everyone, but we would be incredibly appreciative of any amount that can be spared to continue along this path. The price of adoption is full of fees that add up incredibly quickly and can total up to tens of thousands of dollars. We are hoping to raise as close to the $35,000 mark as we can to try and offset the overwhelming amount it will ultimately cost to achieve our dreams. Thank you all so much and God bless you.
Big news! We’ve been matched 😍😍😍
Baby’s due date is February 1st, but birth mom says to expect him/her a little earlier. So, what’s next? We have retained a lawyer to represent our sweet birth mom in her home state as well as a social worker. We also contacted a lawyer here in TN to represent us. We don’t know what the lawyers’ costs will ultimately be right now, but we know the social worker will cost $2000. Additionally, we have monthly payments to help support birth mom with medical expenses to help throughout the pregnancy (anywhere from $500-$1500 monthly). When baby is born, we will have to remain in his/her home state for 7-14 days while paperwork is finalized with the judge, so an air b&b with kitchen and laundry for us will also be an expense we are saving for. We do have some money saved up from our various fundraising side hustles (dog-sitting and our home bakery), but we could definitely use help to cover these upcoming accumulating costs so we have some more financial flexibility once baby is here and we are both on leave from work.
Again— as always— thank you for praying!! We know God is great and we feel so blessed.
(Photo is from us driving the surrounding neighborhoods to deliver t-shirt fundraiser fliers to mailboxes. We copied 750 fliers!)
Thank you,
Brooke and Gregg
The next big step in the process is done! Over the past month we have had a couple generous local photographers offer to do a free shoot to help us create our parent profile. As of 10 minutes ago, our photos have all been submitted to our agency and they will put those & our written sections together this week to create our profile. As soon as next week it could be live and visible to expectant mothers to consider us as adoptive parents! We are unbelievably excited. Thank you to everyone who continues to pray and share our story— we have really felt all the love you are sending our way.
Once we are officially matched (which could be any time between next week 🤞 and two years from now… yes— we’re getting a major lesson in patience), we will need to start paying about $1500- $3000/month in pregnancy-related expenses for care of the birth mother. That’s where our next financial expense will be. We have taken on extra side-hustles, cut back on expenses, and have another fundraising idea in the works to help with these upcoming costs.
If you have the heart to share our story, please continue to do so. 🙏 And if you have the means and will to donate, please know that your funds will be used wisely and appropriately to support the pregnancy of the birth mother & to keep baby healthy until he/she is delivered Earth-side ❤️
No matter what happens, we are thankful God has blessed us with so much love and generosity. ❤️
Thank you!
Brooke & Gregg
Hi everyone! Here’s our latest update:
We are a little more than halfway done making our parent profile. The written sections are done and we are in the process of gathering photos for submission. Thanks to some generous local photographers, we will have some amazing updated “action” shots to showcase what life with us is like in our beautiful home in Tennessee! 🥰
Once that profile is done, it will start to be sent to potential bio moms. We really don’t know how long it will be after that before our family grows. We could be matched within a month… or 2 years. Depending on how far along the bio mom is we could have a little one in the next few months to the next couple of years… so we need to be ready for anything to happen! This is an emotional and exciting process and we are keeping our hearts completely open to whatever God’s plan is.
We've been saving gift cards and collecting Best Buy rewards points for a while now and have been able to make some big purchases using them to help us get ready for a growing family.
Here are some of the major items we’ve been able to get:
-Crib (thank you to our Fairy Godmother who donated this to us a few years ago!)
-Baby monitor
-Diaper Genie
-Car seat
Please keep praying and sharing. Once we get matched, we’ll have many more payments to start making as we support the incredibly selfless bio mom in her pregnancy, and pay legal fees.
Thank you everyone! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!
Brooke and Gregg
Happy holidays everyone! 🦃🎅🎄
What a rollercoaster this past month has been! I hope everyone is taking care of themselves and taking time to slow down during this very busy part of the year <3
With that being said, we are doing the opposite of slowing down and instead are OFFICIALLY partnered with Angel Adoption to find our prospective birth mother and future child! We have been diligently filling out the copious amounts of paperwork required for the home study and family profile so that birth mothers looking to find a home for their family can see what kind of a life we could offer them if we were lucky enough to be chosen. We have also spent a lot of time educating ourselves on the various situations we might find ourselves in including transracial adoptions, open vs closed adoptions, maintaining a relationship with out of state parents, out of state legal matters when it comes to adoptions... the list goes on and on! 😩
While we are extremely excited to be taking this pivotal next step, the costs included from this point are a bit more procedural. We are close to scheduling the first of our Home Study visits which is the first major thing that happens now that we have signed our contract. We are excited and a little bit intimidated by this process, but we know that we are awesome parents and we have so much to offer a child in need, so once we get this knocked out, we will be one step closer achieving our dreams of parenthood! 💞
The biggest chunk that is going to be coming up in the next few months will be the process of finding and hiring an adoption lawyer to handle all the legal mumbo jumbo that goes along with this process. The prices of this can vary widely depending on the individual case however average costs for this process can be roughly $4,000 to $5,000 👀 Our goal is to try and offset as much of this cost as possible by the end of the year so that we have it ready to go whenever the time comes for us to finalize any potential situation that could honestly arise at any minute! We are extremely grateful for everyone who has contributed ANY amount to this process but your continued sharing of our cause on social media has really spread far and wide so please please PLEASE if you can share our link we would be forever grateful. Thank you all soooooooooo much!!!
- Brooke and Gregg
We had our first official meeting with the Director of Angel Adoptions today! At that meeting, aside from contract talk, we talked about payment deadlines and Gregg and I explained that we have been getting so much support from friends, family, and even strangers! But we need some more time to get the $20,000 contract fee raised. The Director said that was no problem and we have until the end of the month. If we still need more time, we can choose to switch to their November accepted slot instead. Of course we are doing everything we can (Gregg is going to get a weekend job 👀) and praying big prayers to get that money raised ASAP. The sooner that is paid, the sooner our parent profile can be made and start to be sent to bio mammas to potentially choose us!
In the meantime, we’ve been given the go-ahead to start the home study process and were referred to a few places that have worked with Angel Adoptions before. We reached out to those places and will be making a decision in the next week.
Thank you so much for how you have just showered us with love and prayers and support. It’s uncomfortable for us to ask for help and to be so open about all the vulnerabilities we’ve been through and are going through, but the constant influx of heartwarming messages we’ve received has been such a comfort and encouragement. 🙏 Thank you!
