National Infertility Awareness Week: Three Kids, Eight Years, and a Lot of Feelings

It's National Infertility Awareness Week, which brings up a lot of feelings for me as someone who spent the better part of eight years trying to build her family (and then built a business because she felt so alone doing it). For those of you who are new here and don't know my story, here are the Cliffs Notes.

My twins came after a PCOS diagnosis and a string of failed IUIs — a chapter that took longer and hurt more than I ever expected, and that eventually led us to IVF. It worked, but a high-risk twin pregnancy made sure I never quite exhaled. I was 27 weeks when my cervix shortened overnight, and what had felt like a regular Tuesday turned into hospital bed rest and a breath I held for weeks.

My third baby was a different kind of hard: two miscarriages and several failed transfers before one last Hail Mary cycle, the kind where you've already agreed on what "done" looks like if it doesn't work. It did work, and he just turned sixteen months, which still feels a little impossible to say out loud.

I share all of this because 1 in 6 people will experience infertility in their lifetime, and most of them will do it in waiting rooms and two-week waits and late-night Google searches that never quite say what they actually need to hear. If you're in it right now, you're not alone. That's the whole reason we're here, and my inbox is always open.