Issue #127: An infertility update
I never thought I'd struggle so much to ask for help
Hi, friends. Aliza here. A few weeks ago, after an early Sunday yoga class, I sat down to write in a quiet café booth. Those uninterrupted moments are precious and rare — and this essay poured out of me. It’s about New Year’s resolutions. It’s also about what’s going on with my fertility.
If this essay isn’t for you right now, whew, do I understand. And thanks, as always, for your support. xx
Written by Aliza Sir. Edited by Aja Frost.
When I was six weeks postpartum with my son, I asked my OBGYN if my C-section scar could impact my fertility. (She said no — which I’ve since learned is only partially true.) I wasn’t ready to get pregnant again, but my then-unfounded fear of infertility had started pulsing beneath the surface.
Less than eighteen months later, after three months of trying, I had a positive pregnancy test. I looked at the stick balanced on the sink and slowly exhaled. That weekend, I giddily shared the news with Aja and a friend over dinner, figuring they’d clock me anyway when I turned down beer at the show we were going to.
After months of breastfeeding, midnight diaper changes, and wake window tracking, Jude finally felt like a functioning human coming into his own personality and idiosyncrasies. He made us laugh; he called for the dog; he toddled down the walkway into daycare each morning. I couldn’t wait for him to become a brother. I dreamed of the chaos more children would introduce into our home.
Then I had a miscarriage. A missed miscarriage. I wrote about how it all unfolded — the shock that the sac I’d been carrying in my uterus for nearly eleven weeks, the one that had been draining me of most of my energy, was, in fact, empty.
That was March 2024. Over the next year, I met setback after setback. My period never returned. My tubes were blocked by scarring. I would probably need IVF to get pregnant again. The scarring, once cleared, had reformed. My lining wasn’t thick enough for an embryo transfer. I’d exhausted all of my company fertility benefits.
I’d been laid off from my job a few months earlier — when it rains, etc. — and I began my new job by requesting multiple sick days for planned procedures. I started to have a recurring dream that Jude was running alone towards an open ocean. I’d race to scoop him up, jerking awake in the lean hours of the morning. As friends, family, and people on social media welcomed new babies, I sank further and further into grief. Sometimes, I’d show up to the fertility clinic in the neighboring town with no memory of having driven there. My body knew the route too well.
Doctors told me that based on my prior medical history, this shouldn’t happen. But it did. My trust in the system — and more painfully, my own body — shrank even further. Sam, my parents, and others held onto glimmers of hope in the stats my doctors shared, but I did not. I was being realistic. I felt hopeless.
While this was happening, I chatted with friends about the wedding outfits we were planning, the summer trips we were taking, the books and shows we were loving. I texted “congratulations!” when someone else announced their pregnancy. I sent food and gift cards when their babies were born. When friends asked about our own efforts to get pregnant, I told them that it “didn’t look good.” At home, I was broken. I hated how painful it felt to see them with their newborns. Each time a friend or coworker made an otherwise innocuous comment about their own family planning — why they’d like to get pregnant in the summer or have a baby in the spring — it stung. I’d been like them once too, but now I was different. I knew that their luck, their joy had nothing to do with mine — but it didn’t feel that way. The baby gear I’d once hesitated to pack away was now collecting dust in the basement.
And I was furious at infertility for siphoning away my joy during these early days with Jude. Each of his developmental milestones marked more time slipping away, the age gap between him and his future sibling growing wider. The grief was so big, the disappointment so vast — every time I felt like I was getting closer to a potential pregnancy, it turned out to be a mirage, and I was crushed again.
So, last year, nine months after the miscarriage, I vowed to choose joy. While I underwent three rounds of IVF, two more painful hysteroscopies, and countless acupuncture sessions, I also reclaimed my life. I went to bachelorette weekends surrounded by breast pumps and pregnant bellies — and danced on a pontoon boat, belted the words to Chappell Roan, stayed up late in bed whispering with friends, and got a bit too stoned on weed gummies.
I got back into running, taking laps around familiar routes near Fresh Pond and the Charles River. Some days, I felt like I was dragging my legs through mud. I stopped at a bench under a generous tree cover and cried. I looked for turtles on a log through the leaves.
In July, our family spent a week along the coast of Maine. We ate ice cream on a different dock each night. We stayed up late so we wouldn’t miss the sunset. We found lobster pounds we vowed to return to summer after summer.
In October, Sam and I pooled our credit card points and took a long weekend trip to Paris, a city neither of us had visited in over a decade. We walked through winding streets hand in hand. We swooned over pictures of Jude and our dog Oliver on our phones. We cried thinking about what it might be like when we finally held another baby one day. One afternoon, we found a bench at the tip of a park in the middle of the Seine. Sam laid his head back in my lap and fell asleep. I picked up my book — but read just a couple pages before I felt myself getting overwhelmed with both gratitude and grief. I put my book down and sat in silence.
In 2025, I got comfortable settling into the sadness. It became a part of me. But I found that, with effort and intention, I could experience incredible moments of joy, too. I’ve gone swimming in the ocean more in the past eighteen months than I had since childhood. Each time, I’m filled with a rush of gratitude, awe, and joy. Even if my family still doesn’t look the way I’d expected, we’ve fostered such a full life.
In September, we matched with a potential surrogate. It was time to give my body a break. I was terrified — both of the financial cost and the psychological one. But I was also relieved.
When I touch my stomach, as I do often, still soft from carrying Jude over three years ago, I’m sad that I’ll never feel another baby kick inside of me. I turn away from pregnant women on the street. I yearn to finally unpack the boxes of baby things in my basement. I also joke with friends about the silver linings — if that’s what you can call it when you’ve been diagnosed with infertility. I can drink. I can smoke weed. I can get tattoos. Mostly, I appreciate being able to plan for the upcoming year without another possible pregnancy looming over each decision.
When I started thinking about my 2026 resolution, I was frustrated and bitter that trying to have a kid would, once again, define my year — my growth, my happiness. This profound pain is still at the forefront of everything I do.
If in year one I hated infertility for stripping me of joy and being present with my son, I hate it in year two for isolating me. The pain has been so much quieter, subtler, harder to share with others. My son’s traumatic health event in September and husband’s car accident in November (thankfully, they’re both okay) only intensified my anxiety in the frailty of being able to hold us together.
I’ve joined support groups, but I’ve also found myself weathering it more often on my own. I picked up a copy of Buddhist Pema Chödrön’s book, When Things Fall Apart, to help myself lean more into acceptance.
Each month, I write short entries to my son in a journal set aside specifically for him. I tell him about the questions he’s asking; the movies he loves; the mundane adventures we take together. I hope he cherishes these stories one day. I know I will. They will be a reminder of all of the good during this hard and uncertain time.
A few weeks ago, my therapist shared a quote from writer Anne Lamott:
“Periods in the wilderness or desert were not lost time. You might find life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water. I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. I so resent this.”
Then she asked me: “If you were to choose a word for this season of grief — this season in the wilderness — what would it be?”
I felt the word touch the back of my throat, bringing me to tears almost instantly. “Help,” I said quietly. “I just want help.”
I felt embarrassed that this was the first word to come to me. Almost as quickly, I felt the urge to add that I was okay; it wasn’t that serious — just like I’ve apologized to friends in the past for being the “sad, angry friend.” Who am I to be sad and angry when I have so much to be grateful for? But as I thought about it more, I realized how much relief asking for help can bring. I remembered how Aja had laughed when I’d apologized for being a downer lately. “You’re probably still my most positive friend,” she’d said.
I felt reassured, both because yes, that’s who I feel I am. But also because it was a reminder that I can be a bit more sad and angry, and my people will still be friends with me.
My 2026 resolution is to get comfortable asking for help.
In a very literal sense, I do need help. I need help to bring my next child into the world. But in a more abstract sense, I need my people right now, offering lightness and support and acceptance as I continue to chart a way through the wilderness. I want to be together. I want to have sleepovers. I want to laugh. I want to dance. I want to feel comfortable to talk about surrogacy and infertility when it feels right (and not to talk about it when it doesn’t). We’re not through this one yet, baby.
When Aja and I were on vacation a few weeks ago, I had to take a call with our surrogacy lawyer. After months of medical appointments and bureaucracy, we’re days away from legal clearance — a process I’ve found difficult and quite unsettling. My instinct was to stifle it, not to bother her with my own sadness. But I could feel my uneasiness with the contracting process getting in the way of my ability to enjoy the afternoon. I decided I’d tell her what was going on. “Oh Aliza, that sucks,” she said. We talked about it for enough time that I started to laugh about the ridiculousness of the process again. And then she gave me a hug.
We didn’t solve anything, but I felt better. There are no shortcuts through the wilderness. But I know I’ll keep finding life, wildflowers, fossils, sources of water.
Next week, I’m sharing my conversation with Kayti Christian and Amy Salke, the two incredible humans behind the Fried Eggs podcast. I asked them to share their own stories about IVF and infertility — and we’ll talk more about how to help a friend going through fertility challenges. See you then.
This is so beautifully written and such a genuine act of public service. Some readers will feel less alone after reading this; others will understand and empathize in a way they haven't before. Rooting for a beautiful pass through the wilderness!
This is so beautiful, Aliza. Asking for help is so hard! Sending you and your family so much love!