while we're waiting

These past couple of days, I've been completely absorbed by Peggy Orenstein's compelling memoir, Waiting for Daisy. The book's been sitting on my bookshelf since last September when a friend lent it to me after I was told by my ob. gyn. that I couldn't conceive naturally; that the infertility drug Clomid would be the next step for us. Of course, around the same time I did conceive naturally and, perhaps worried that reading books about infertility issues would somehow be bad karma, I focused instead on positive thinking and immersed myself in books about natural childbirth and pregnancy. Until yesterday. Re-reading the book cover, I realized this is not just a book for women who struggle to become pregnant. It's for all women who at one point or another have struggled with the question of how to balance between the desire for career and self-reliance as modern independent women and the urge to have a family, a child. For how can one have the latter without compromising the former? (Especially, as Orenstein notes, in a country that does not accommodate working moms.) Orenstein gives a brutally honest account about this 'conflict of interests' in her own life, and how the quest for motherhood became an all-consuming and devastating obsession until finally, after months on Clomid, several attempts with intra uterine insemination, two attempts with in vitro fertilization, one attempt with an egg donor, a failed adoption, and three miscarriages, she conceived and had her daughter Daisy.

Orenstein's point is not that having a child miraculously solves everything or even anything. But her account does make it clear that every baby is a miracle. It sounds so cliché, but when you read about it and realize what it takes for an egg and a sperm cell to merge and form that little zygote that eventually turns into a fetus, then a baby, it really is quite remarkable that it can happen with such frequency! We were envisioning a battle with infertility issues when we found out about our little miracle. Needless to say, there is nothing about this amazing journey that we're taking for granted; we cherish every moment of it. Even as we're waiting.