I guess to begin this blog I will begin by telling you all who I am and my story.
My name is Erica Maniotis. I have been married for 7 years to an amazing man, who has stood by my side through some hard hard times.
12 years ago I got preganant for the first time. I always new I wanted children so this for me was a dream. Early on I got very sick and eventually diagnosed with preclampsia. The little girl I was carrying was diagnosed with IUGR. On August 11, 1997 I gave birth to our daughter Nicole by emergency c-section, weighing 1 pound 12 ounces. From that day forward I always knew I wanted to have more kids... When Nicole turned 5 we decided to try again. Things this time around were not so easy. After 7 years of trying unsuccessfully we decided to get some fertility help. We went through 3 IUI's and 2 IVF's before getting pregnant with our son. For those treatments alone after insurance covered their part we still owed 5,000. Quite a bit of month for a couple with not a lot of savings. From day one my pregnancy was hard. After specialist beyond specialist we only heard bad news. We heard he had severe IUGR, brain abnormalities, etc... It was the hardest thing to hear, but we choose to move forward and do everything possible for this little boy. Unfortunately we could only do so much when I developed the Hellp syndrome at 25 weeks. I delivered him as well with emergency c-section weighing 12 ounces. What a little fighter he was though. We were told since the time I got sick that he would not make it. He certainly proved them wrong at the time of delivery. But little by little things got to be too much, and batteling infection beyond infection we lost our miracle Mikey Jr. at 48 days. I have never felt so lost or alone as the night he passed. From that moment on I promised myself to live everyday to the fullest. My dream in life is to have children, a sibling for my daughter. And even after all this my dream still exists. I know that physically I can not carry my own child, so for us our options are surrogacy or adoption.. Which brings me to making this site. The average cost of IVF is 13,000 per cycle and many women need to undergo 2 or more. There are not many grants or funds out there to help this cause. Trying to raise this money is overwhelming. I would love to hear of fundraising ideas, or anything anyone else has in mind.... We are still trying to pay the 8 grand we owe from having Michael so looking towards the future in the "infertility" world is looking bleak.
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