Huffington Magazine Issue 17 | Page 45

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.