HUFFINGTON
10.07.12
UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES
MIRACLE BABIES
at Massachusetts General Hospital in Cambridge.
Nonetheless, the connection
flourishes in the public imagination. Ask a handful of women
who have dealt with infertility
and they’ll roll their eyes over the
number of times they heard some
version of: “Just relax. If you stop
stressing out, it’ll happen.”
“People say all those things that
they think are helpful,” said Tracy
Birkinbine, 40. “I heard them all
the time: ‘Just adopt, it’ll happen.’”
Tracy started trying to have a
baby in 1996 at 24 and taking Clomid soon thereafter. Earlier in her
20s she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal
disorder that can make it harder to
have children, but everything else
looked good. Her doctors checked
her tubes for blockage and analyzed her husband’s sperm.
By 26, Tracy was referred to a
reproductive endocrinologist, who
suggested she move on to IVF. She
dove into three cycles, carrying
around a fishing tackle box with
needles to give herself injections
of the fertility drugs needed to
stimulate egg development. The
medicines made her “not very
nice” to her husband, she said.
Tracy, like many women in this
situation, was so driven to birth
a baby that she felt inadequate
when she could not. “I would say
really stupid things, like, ‘You
need to just divorce me and find
somebody else who can give you a
baby,’” Tracy said. “Or I would get
really angry and say mean things
that were not true and were hurtful. I knew it when I was saying it,
but I couldn’t stop. I almost felt
like a different person.”
But the most fraught period was
the stretch known in infertilityspeak as “the two-week wait,” the
time between the end of treatment
and before the pregnancy test.
“It’s excruciating,” Tracy said.
“Every move I made, I was afraid
The process
of cryopreservation,
in which
cells such
as human
embryos or
a woman’s
unfertilized
eggs are
frozen and
stored away.