Help Jeffica's Family Grow

Hello! Our names are Jeff and Jessica, and we're thankful that you are reading our story. Our family story begins when we met through Christian Mingle. Neither of us really expected much when we joined but were pleasantly surprised when we found a kindred spirit in each other. We immediately bonded over our love of history and our small messages quickly blossomed into very long emails. We were excited to discover that we shared an interest in many activities such as video games, comic books, anime, and a host of other nerdy stuff. We also laughed at how close our names are (Jeffery Lynn and Jessica Lynne), joking that our “celebrity couple” name would be “Jeffica Lyn.” With so much in common, we quickly fell in love and got married a year after we met. We call each other our "adorkable geekqual." We've been married for four years and look forward to many more years together.  

As to our goal of building a family, after our first year of marriage, we decided to start trying to have children. We tried for several years but were still having trouble conceiving. We went to several doctors and finally a fertility specialist. We were told that it was highly unlikely we would ever conceive naturally, as we found out that we are infertile. This crushed both of us, because Jeff has wanted to be a father most of his life, and Jessica loves her niece and nephews and was hoping to have children of her own and that they could grow up together. We struggled to accept the reality that we won’t be able to have kids without medical intervention. Eventually, the Lord gave us strength to move forward and start looking at our options to build our family. 

While we were looking at adoption or fertility treatment possibilities, Jeff heard about embryo adoption on the radio. We did a lot of research and fell in love with the idea of giving these embryos a chance to be born. The thought that we would have the opportunity to be there for every moment of our baby's development, growth, and future life with us brought us great joy. After much thought and prayer, we decided this was the path we wanted to pursue to help our little Player 3 enter the game of life. 

In the midst of this journey to build our family, though, we had quite a few setbacks. We decided that for the 2019-2020 school year, Jessica would take a year off teaching and we would focus on trying to start our family. After trying Clomid to help with fertility, Jessica developed a tumor in one of her ovaries and had to have surgery to have both tumor and ovary removed. Just as we were dealing with that, Jeff found out his company was downsizing and lost his job. Jessica's car then went in for maintenance and she was told it was dangerous to drive and that the repairs would be more than the car was worth. A few weeks later, Jeff got rear-ended in a car accident and his car was totaled. This then led into 2020, and it was difficult for Jeff to find work in the midst of the Covid crisis. We also had several house repairs to make, as our roof started to leak, our dryer died, and our septic tank backed up into our downstairs bathroom (nothing says "love and commitment” like bailing 20 years of poopy water from your bathtub to your backyard!). This is when we found out about our infertility issues through several expensive doctor’s appointments. God was still good, though, as Jessica’s sister and brother-in-law let us have their old car as they were looking to upgrade. Jessica’s tumor was found to be benign but still required ultrasounds every 6 months, as the tumor type has been known to throw malignant tumors occasionally. Jeff was also able to find a part-time counseling job in the summer of 2020, and finally in December of 2020, he found a full-time counseling job! Unfortunately, on Christmas Day we had to go to the hospital, as Jeff was having severe abdominal pain and fever/chills. He was diagnosed with a complicated case of diverticulitis and was in the hospital for several days. He had to be readmitted in January, thus losing about 3 weeks of work (unpaid) between December to January. Again in April, he went back and was finally admitted mid-April and scheduled for emergency surgery. He had to take over a month unpaid off of work for recovery (but thankfully did not lose his job because of it and is making a full recovery now!). 

Throughout all of this, God has been good. We have always had enough to eat, we have been able to pay our property taxes and insurance payments on time. We have had clothes to wear, a house to live in, heat and air conditioning, a car to drive, and all our needs met. All of these issues, though, have eaten through our savings completely, making it very difficult for us to afford embryo adoption. We are hoping to raise enough money through Adoption Bridge to help us start our journey. As Jeff is starting back up at work and Jessica found a part-time job online, we are making more money and pouring what we can back into savings. We'd like to save up enough again so that when we do get pregnant, we can afford the medical care and costs of having a baby. That's why raising money on Adoption Bridge is so important to us - the more we get from Adoption Bridge, the less we have to take away from our effort at restocking our savings for the baby. 

We appreciate you taking the time to read our story. If you can give a little to help, we would be so appreciative. Even if you can't give anything to help us, we appreciate the thoughts and prayers of those reading this!