Some experiences in life stay with you and teach you lessons long after people think you should have moved past them. That’s what happened to me with pregnancy and becoming a mother after infertility. As infertility patients, our focus is constantly on the next step: the next procedure, the next medication, the next blood draw, the next ultrasound, the next retrieval, the next transfer, the next pregnancy test, and the next month to try again. To hope those two lines appear. That’s what we are working towards, that’s our dream. Those two pink lines and...

Julie Marie • Mar 25, 2021

I'm occupying space between two worlds. The first is a place that only consistently left me feeling disappointed, heartbroken, and devastated. The second is a world that always felt too far away to be real or within reach. But here I am. I am pregnant.  I can't believe I just wrote those words. It hasn't truly hit me yet, even though I'm physically feeling the effect of this apple seed-sized human being growing inside me. After all of the waiting, the money, the pain--physical, emotional, and mental--and the tears, it appears to finally be our...

Alina Crawford • Jan 26, 2021

To Lena, Your Harper’s article caused quite the stir within the vast infertility community. There were varying perspectives and responses, and we’d like to share them with you.  We write this letter not on behalf of an “infertility club,” but on behalf of each of our individual hearts. We include people who have become parents via egg donation, sperm donation, embryo adoption, traditional adoption, and surrogacy. We include people who have become single parents by choice. We include those who are childless not by choice. And womxn who have had hysterectomies and have one ovary, just...

The Infertility Community • Dec 10, 2020

My husband and I were diagnosed with unexplained infertility when we were both 27. We went through five IUIs and three rounds of IVF with my own eggs, and we never even experienced an embryo transfer during that time, let alone pregnancy. From our three egg retrievals, we got a total of 24 embryos, all of which arrested well before Day 5. At that point, our clinic said the degrading of the embryos after fertilization pointed to egg quality issues. They suggested moving on to donor eggs, so after three years of trying to conceive...

Danielle Repsch • Nov 17, 2020

People assume that once a fertility struggle is ‘over’, all is perfect. But, do infertility scars ever fully heal? "But I just don't understand, I mean after all this time? I have my little girl now—so why did her telling me she was pregnant make me feel like I was right back there again?" These words were spoken recently by Maria, one of the many women I work with therapeutically in my role as a perinatal psychologist who specializes in fertility issues. Like many who go on to conceive successfully via ART, she knows she...

Julianne Boutaleb • Aug 7, 2020