Fertility Answers - Helping Build Families

Gift of Hope 2017 – Jordan & Daniel

Male fertility issues complicate couple’s efforts to have a baby

Lake Charles couple wins Gift of Hope IVF Grant 2017, a free round of in vitro fertilization.

Jordan & Daniel - Gift of Hope IVF Grant recipients
Jordan & Daniel – Gift of Hope IVF Grant recipients

As a girl growing up, Jordan played two things: house and school. For hours at a time, she could be found comforting babies, cooking supper, and balancing the tough job of being a teacher to a class full of Beanie Babies. In her mind, she could do all three tasks at once.

Years later, she is doing two of those things. She is a teacher and often takes on the role of cooking dinner as well. But when she and her husband Daniel sit down for dinner, they are struck by how many empty places there are around their table. At night, the spare bedrooms are quiet and empty and her floors are always clean.

Jordan and Daniel met in 2014 and married less than 8 months later, both knowing that they were meant for each other. To save money for a home for their future family, they moved into a tiny apartment at the top of a barn. All the while, Daniel was personally building their home after working all day as a teacher. They decided to wait to have children because there simply wasn’t enough room to raise a child in their tiny dwelling. With less than nine months to go before they could move into their new home, Jordan went off birth control. And then, nothing.

After months of nothing, they started to worry about their chances to get pregnant, so they started looking for answers. After a lot of testing and frustrations, they received the diagnosis of male factor infertility. Over the next year they would have four failed ovulation induction cycles. The next logical step in treatment is in vitro fertilization, a treatment that is out of their reach financially on the salary of two teachers.

Jordan and Daniel are kept going by their faith and the thoughts of their future children. “We could be overcome with sadness, but we choose joy,” says Jordan. “We choose joy when other people conceive, and we share joy at the thought of our future world-changers that we teach daily.” Their profession of teaching has been silently preparing them for how they plan to raise their own children.

The Lake Charles couple was overjoyed to learn they had won the Gift of Hope IVF Grant 2017. “In our hearts, we are already parents,” says Jordan. “We just need a baby to make the dream come true.”