Mission

Our mission at Evelyn’s Treehouse is to come alongside to equip, educate, and encourage families in the hospital that have received a medically complex, life-changing medical diagnosis for their child.

Goals

Our main goal is to offer short-term assistance in hopes of making a long-term investment in the lives of families upon receiving a new medical diagnosis.

  1. Empower: We aim to empower families that are pregnant with a child with a medically-complex diagnosis. We empower families prenatally by offering emotional support.

  2. Equip: From birth - 2 years of age our main goal is to help equip families. Our main initiative is partnerships with the Neonatal Intensive Care Units & Pediatric Intensive Care Units at Children’s Hospitals.

  3. Encourage: We aim to empower families that have been caring for their medically complex child for 2+ years. Caregiving for a medically complex child can easily fatigue and overwhelm a parent. We offer encouragement to parents through support, community groups, printed resources, and gifts. Our main objective is for the parent and caregiver to feel seen, noticed, and valued in their day to day work that often goes without notice. We believe helping a parent with their mental health creates a healthy environment at home for their medically complex child, and sets everyone in the home up to thrive.

Our History

At our 20 week anatomy ultrasound, we found out that our first daughter had Trisomy 18. Three 18th Chromosomes in every cell of her body. 90% of pregnancies with Trisomy 18 end in termination. Of those that are carried through, 75% will not make it to a live birth. 21 days is the average life span for a child born alive with Trisomy 18, and less than 10% will make it to their first birthday. These numbers are terrifying.

When Evelyn made it to her first birthday, we knew this was a huge milestone not just for our family, but for the special needs community. My husband and I shared our dreams and we were both on the same page, we wanted to start an organization in honor of Evelyn.

We founded and started, Evelyn’s Treehouse. The first several months after Evelyn was born were some of the hardest and loneliest days of our life. We didn’t know where to start, what resources were available to us, or if we’d be able to take care of Evelyn on our own. As we spoke with families of children with special needs, this feeling is normal. On average, it takes a parent about 5 months of caring for their medically complex child to feel that they have a grasp on what they’re doing.