(For those of you who saw the blog before I decided to redo it because there have been a few changes)
Meet my sister Carri. Carri Skinner is her name. She is spunky, a little bit of a spit fire, definitely stubborn but she is also very loving, caring, generous, gifted, sweet, and quite possibly the best barista there is. Course I don’t drink coffee, much to her dismay, but she does make me a mean mint hot chocolate when I’m in town ;) Carri is married to Milo and has been for 7 ½ yrs. Milo’s family and our family grew up going to the same church all of our life. My mom worked at the church and so did Milo’s dad so naturally we saw a lot each other. I never saw it coming (Carri & Milo), not even when it was coming because I didn’t think she was serious when she told me she liked him. But she was and then I saw the light and now I have the best brother-in-law in the world who can do anything. No literally he knows everything!! So throughout their marriage, which has taken them across the country and back and then across the country again and back again (thankfully), they have been trying to get pregnant for most of that time. Despite their efforts they have had no luck. This is particularly heartbreaking because if you were to ask my sister when we were little what she wanted to be when she grew up she would have said, “to be barefoot and pregnant with 6 kids”.
Despite wanting to have kids of her own she has also always had a passion to adopt as well. Since having difficulties getting pregnant she has looked into options for adopting and has decided that she would like to adopt through foster care. That right there tells you how big her heart is. So she has taken steps to prepare for that while still searching out fertility options. If you know about foster care you know that if you get a child or baby you may only have them for a short time and then they are returned to the mother but in some cases you are able to adopt. So Carri really has her heart set on adoption through foster care but it is also very important to her to keep trying to get pregnant. As you know fertility treatments aren’t particularly cheap. Intrauterine injections are the cheapest form of fertility treatments in which Carri has done a few times last year and is hoping to give that a try again real soon as they have the money for it. Doctors say that with intrauterine injections her chance of getting pregnant is 50/50. The best chance of her getting pregnant is through in vetro fertilization but this can cost up to $12,000 which puts that out of reach for them. Carri has told me that if money was not an obstacle she would do in vetro.
Over the past couple of months I have really wanted to see if there was a way that I could help her financially to be able to afford treatments. I woke up one morning in November with this idea to create a blog for her. I have had a couple people offer to donate in years past as I’ve talked about Carri’s struggles and I thought that this blog could be a great avenue for people to help. If you would like to help Carri and Milo in their journey to have kids there are several ways that you can help.
~ The first is through prayer. Prayer is HUGE and God hears our prayers!
~ If you would like to give financially you can click on the Donate button to the right and give any amount you wish. I have set up a donation account in Carri’s name through US Bank called the Barefoot and Pregnant Fund. You can also send a check made out to the Barefoot and Pregnant Fund to my address, which I will give out if you want to email me. Also if would like to give Carri a note or card with your donation you can send that as well and I will make sure to get it to her.
~ I have also set up an Etsy shop (barefootnpgregnant.etsy.com) where I am selling some handmade items. I only have a few there right now but I’ll crank out some more here soon. The proceeds from every purchase will go directly into the Barefoot and Pregnant fund. You can see the items I have so far in my shop on the bottom of the page.
~ If you would like to help but can't financially and have some crafty skills you can donate any handmade items you make for me to sell in my Etsy shop. If you are interested in doing this please let me know. I would ask that you get them to me through mail or in person and provide me with descriptions of your items along with a price that you believe would be appropriate to sell them at. If you wanted to donate any shipping materials I would appreciate that as well. Thank you to those people who have already offered to donate items!!
~ Finally – get the word out! Share this blog with someone you know that may like to help.
For those of you who know Carri you know that she would be a phenomenal mom! Carri does not know that I am doing this for her for now and I would like to keep it that way. I want to get a good chunk saved up for her before I tell her. Thank you for your prayers and for listening.
