How Babies Are Made

I like to say that when my kids ask how babies are made, I will tell them that when two people love one another very much they find a good doctor and...

Maggie reminded me it is National Infertility Awareness Week. Anyone who has read my blog for a while knows that my three children were conceived with the help of IVF. Chris and I tried to get pregnant (first on our own for over a year, then for the better part of another year with help from specialists), finally conceiving Ada in our first attempt at IVF. I thought I was the poster-child for IVF. Look how easy that was!

After a few years we decided to try for another child, and we tried and tried and tried. It took us a year, and by our final attempt I had given up any hope that it would work. But it did, and we got Mira and Ian out of the deal.

When I first started to realize that we were not going to get pregnant the old-fashioned way I didn't know anyone else who had this kind of trouble. I had several friends who got pregnant practically without trying, and though I have friends who followed me down this rocky path, I did not know about their efforts at the time. Little did I know that this is a common, if unfortunate, situation. Like many others who face infertility, it was not until I started to share our struggle that I heard from others going through it as well. And now I am friends with a number of people - in real life and through blogs - who have gone or are going through infertility, and sharing our struggles means a lot to me.

I have written this before, but knowing that other people have gone through this, that it is not a personal failing on my part, made the process (if not the negative test results) more bearable. Knowing this helped me to write about my efforts to get pregnant and the emotions and expenses involved. My family is "complete" but I still hold the memory of the work it took to get here, and I hope that my words can be some comfort to people who might feel that they are facing infertility alone.