Once challenged to write a story in six words, Ernest Hemingway penned on a napkin: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never used.”

More Information

The Broken Brown Egg (thebrokenbrownegg.org)—From the website: “The Broken Brown Egg exists to empower, inform and advocate for those questioning or experiencing the impact of infertility, with an emphasis on the Black experience of it.”

The New York Times: Fertility—This is a terrific resource with many up-to-date articles on many aspects of infertility. Well worth some time, if you can access it without a subscription.

National Institutes of Health: Fertility and Infertility

Path 2 Parenthood —An inclusive website for all types of couples, contains easy-to-read factsheets on such topics as intrauterine insemination and Intracytoplasmic sperm injection; a good place to get an understanding of how complex this issue can be.

Resolve —A longstanding, go-to website for infertility information

Arghavan Salles, “I Spent My Fertile Years Training to Be a Surgeon. Now It Might Be Too Late for Me to Have a Baby,” Time, January 3, 2019
“The doctor described all the steps in the egg-freezing process. I would have to inject four shots a day into my abdomen and get ultrasounds, blood draws and labs every few days until my eggs were mature enough for retrieval. There would also be a risk of injuring major blood vessels or intestines while performing the retrieval. To add to my anxiety, the procedure would cost about $10,000, most of which wouldn’t be covered by insurance. The medications cost an additional $3,000 to $4,000—for one round—and I was told to expect four or five eggs, at best, from one cycle.”

Regina Townsend, “The Lasting Trauma of Infertility,” The New York Times, October 23, 2019 (Excellent article which I hope you can open; sometimes requires a subscription with NYT.)
“How many people do we pass every single day who are carrying around raging fires—who have a passion or a pain inside that is so great they can barely contain it? For me, and for thousands of other people, infertility is that raging fire.”

Shawnee Barton, “My Miraculous Conception,” Slate, November 28, 2011 (Contains a slideshow which meaningfully depicts what it is like to go through an IVF cycle. Ms. Barton and her husband were extremely fortunate to succeed. Look at these slides, however, and imagine what it would be like to go through this experience and not succeed.) 
“After three long years of trying and much consideration, we decided to spend some of the money we’d saved for a house down payment on in-vitro fertilization. We had no idea what to expect. In February 2010, I started documenting my first—and as it turned out, my only—IVF cycle, in hopes of sharing the process with other women battling infertility.

Kristin L. Rooney and Alice D. Domar, “The Relationship Between Stress and Infertility,” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2018 Mar; 20(1): 41–47.
“Depression levels in patients with infertility have been compared with patients who have been diagnosed with cancer.… Despite the prevalence of infertility, the majority of infertile women do not share their story with family or friends, thus increasing their psychological vulnerability.”

Robert Sapolsky, "We're All Stressed, but Misunderstanding Can Make It Worse," The Los Angeles Times, August 26, 2012
“The same problem pertains to a more benign example, namely infertility. For families trying to conceive, infertility is a huge stressor. Not only do they have to face the possibility that they’ll be denied one of the greatest potential sources of happiness in life, their lives are also turned upside down. Making love becomes an unsuccessful medical procedure; family gatherings become painful reminders of what isn’t happening. And the high-tech medical procedures to address infertility, such as in vitro fertilization, are expensive, grueling procedures with no guarantee of success. The final insult, though, is the advice that almost invariably comes — from a friend, a relative, even a doctor: “Remember, you must relax as much as possible — after all, stress can prevent pregnancy.

Heidi Krupp-Lisiten, "What I Learned from Fertility Treatment," Oprah.com, June 9, 2010
“Somehow, somewhere I knew my dreams—although they haven’t come true just yet—will, when it’s time, in God’s time. The right time; not my time. That was the lesson: I cannot and could not control this.”

Carina Hiesh "What IVF Feels Like, According to 12 Women Who Did It," Cosmopolitan, November 2, 2017
“‘Isolation is the worst part. Everyone around you thinks it’s really no big deal, because it’s so commonplace. Unhelpful advice comes from all directions, especially from women who conceive easily. Meanwhile, you’re stabbing yourself with needles on a daily basis, hormones are raging, you’re getting emotionally attached to the idea of pregnancy, and you have no control, none, over what the future holds. It was terrifying for me.’ —Tara, 45”

Infertility Resources

The statistics were badly against my husband and me when I was in my late 30's, despite the new options at our disposal, once we decided to go the route of infertility treatment. As time went by, and we spent more and more money without results, it was hard not to to be depressed. But the prefix 'in' of 'infertility' can mean (rather than not fertile) exactly what it says: inside, in the middle of, surrounded by, which means fully absorbed in and committed to, in this case, having a baby. Try to think of infertility this way.

Couples who struggle to achieve a viable pregnancy struggle with the part of family-building that should be the easiest and certainly the most intimate and private. I first got the idea for the All-Weather Friend while entrenched in this painful world. It has taken many years to reconcile what did and didn't happen to and for my me, for us. My own mother and obstetrician father didn't seem to get it, much less my friends. I can hardly write about that time in my life without reliving the sense of alienation from the people who were closest to me and from whom I most needed compassion and understanding. 

It went on for five years—sixty uninterrupted months of assisted reproduction through drugs, surgeries, and IVF attempts, none of which were reimbursed by insurance, not that money was the important thing. All of this culminated in one pregnancy, miscarried. Many years passed before I could contemplate telling the story, and I alone know the whole of it. Please, if you have a friend who is going through this difficulty, take the time to learn something about it before you imagine that you know what to say. Better still, be willing just to listen.