First of all I would like to send a HUGE 'Thank You!' to Minti, it's founders and it's members for the overwhelming love, encouragement, and donations. We answer a lot of the same questions in our e-mails every day but it's nice to answer them here where everybody can benefit from the responses.

Second, We've obviously had a couple of problems with our server being down over the last couple of days and we're working to fix it. We are up currently but only through a redirect. We also have a request in to add Minti.com to our "Thank You" page for everything you all have done. Hopefully it will drive some traffic and give more people the opportunity to discover this amazing community.

Third, I would like address the question of adoption. It's the subject of quite a few of the e-mails we've received and it's a very important topic. Brandi and I have both considered adoption and at one point were told it was our only option. The fact is we both want to adopt and probably (barring triplets) will. We would certainly like to have more than one child and don't want to do IVF more than once in a lifetime. We chose to go through IVF first in part because we have age on our side, in part because it's cheaper, and in part because we would like to have the experience of pregnancy, birth, and the feeling of having our first child like most other couples get to have. And as long as there is a chance to have a child of our very own, we're going to take it.

We realize that adoption is a beautiful, selfless act and anxiously look forward to the day when we are ready to say, "Let's do it!" and begin that journey. We know that the moment we walk through the front door of our home with that child, it will be as if we did give birth to him or her and we will never know the difference... because there is none.

Thank you for giving me a place to say all this.

S.

Hi there!

We're Shelton & Brandi Koskie. The long and short of it is that we've been trying to get pregnant for a little over two years. And while we were sure we were doing it right, we decided to visit our doctor about six months ago- in December 2005.

After a lot of time with many doctors we learned in April that our only choice is through In Vitro Fertlization (IVF).

We were given an estimate for this procedure a little over $15,000 and told to allow for up to $20,000. And we don't really have that kind of dough lying around.

We also started doing research to learn what other couples had to say about their experiences with IVF- but could find very, very little. Everything we found was so textbook.

So we put our heads together and with the generous assistance of some very good friends, we started the Web site www.babyorbust.com.

If we can get 20,000 people to visit the site and each donate $1- then we'll be able to have our first baby. And, we're going to keep a blog so that we can journal every detail of our experience. Hopefully, other couples will find this to be a valuable resource.

Please help us by sharing our site with as many people as you can.