The Sleeping Stork – A supporting environment for the fertility challenged.

From eager parents to “infertility patients”

We are childless and not by choice.

We walked in as “parents-to-be” and walked out as “infertility patients.” The moment you are diagnosed as the infertility patient your path to parenthood takes a drastic turn. It is at this juncture where everything you will experience and feel is different from other couples. It’s a struggle that no one, unless they have been on this path before, will ever understand – they just can’t, as much or as little as they try. We are childless and not by choice. We are the parents who get neglected and often times forgotten about, we are the ones who struggle in silence and are not expected to grieve for something we never had. But we are warriors. We fight so hard for something that is not guaranteed and sacrifice for someone we have yet to hold.

Beginning Treatment

Nervous. Excited. Scared. Hopeful. The range of emotions is complex with infertility and its treatment. I was still in a state of somewhat disbelief, that now I officially joined the 6.1 million women experiencing infertility, but eager to get treatment underway. I was hopeful for an explanation…and a solution to our problem, yet at the time found myself struggling with the idea of medical intervention to conceive – I wanted to stay as near to “natural conception” as possible, but knew it was’t in our cards. Eventually, it dawned on me that we, as lifeforms, have an innate calling to reproduce – whether that happens through conceiving in your bed at home or through treatment in your doctor’s office – we are trying to fulfill a biological destiny and it doesn’t get any more natural than that.

It didn’t work

Endurance. Remember, more often than not, infertility and all that comes with it – tests, treatment, emotions – is a marathon. Often times you will need to undergo more than one infertility treatment, and multiple times, to find the best method for you to conceive. With unexplained infertility, the quest can seem even more daunting. You’re presented with a myriad of possible solutions – and yet none have given you the desired result. It’s hard, it’s frustrating to say the least, and you wonder when, if ever.

Pregnancy post treatment

Just like your path to conceiving a child was different than other couples, expect your pregnancy to be a different experience too. Our second IVF worked and the range of emotions that followed took me by surprise. I wasn’t prepared for how guarded I felt being pregnant or the cautiousness that came with each ultrasound and test. I thought the weight of infertility would magically be lifted, but it followed me through pregnancy and post-delivery.