This year’s grant winner!

We are very proud to announce the recipient of this year’s Ella Rose Memorial Grant has been selected. Kiley and Xavier have been struggling to start their family for years and will use the funds to pay for some of their medical and legal expenses. Kiley was gracious enough to share their story with us:

“My husband Xavier and I are honored to be the inaugural recipients of the Ella Rose Memorial Grant. Our journey with infertility began abruptly when I unexpectedly had a hysterectomy due to a cancer scare during a routine fibroid removal surgery. In one day, my now-husband and I went from thinking we could have children to knowing I would never be able to carry.
We hoped to be parents still someday and began researching surrogacy. In the fall of 2021, we met our gestational carrier and her family. We had matched independently via social media—something I still find unbelievable. I was not very active on social media but had taken the leap to post in a surrogacy matching group. God helped unite our two families, and having their family in our lives has been a great blessing. They have graciously given so much time, energy, and sacrifice to help us create our own family. In the spring of 2022, we discovered we were expecting via surrogacy and were thrilled with the news. We quipped that we had fallen in love with our baby at the first embryo picture. Around 12 weeks, we found out that our baby was a boy but also had a severe congenital anomaly that might not be compatible with life. We felt helpless, and every day over the next few weeks felt incredibly long. God ultimately called on him to be an angel just shy of 16 weeks. We named him Jacob, and he was perfect. We saved a recording of his heartbeat and have his tiny ink handprints and footprints. We are grateful to be his parents, thankful he didn’t suffer, and grateful to our gestational carrier, who surrounded him with love. To anyone who has experienced miscarriage or loss, know you are not alone. Take all the time you need to grieve and give yourself grace. We will always miss our son.
Our gestational carrier was willing to carry for us again, and we are now expecting a little girl. We are thankful to live in a time where science allows for someone else to carry our child and are appreciative of our gestational carrier and her family. Infertility is burdensome, but it has given us friendship and shown us the care of those around us. It has taught us that our community cares for us. As the saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child.” Sometimes it takes a herd to have a child, too.