Looking back now, that was probably the night my real life finally began.
Michael and I tried to have a baby for seven years.
Seven years of fertility appointments, hormone injections, temperature charts, and medical vocabulary I never wanted to learn. Seven years of hope that arrived quietly at the start of every cycle and dissolved just as quietly at the end of it. Infertility doesn’t just break your heart in one clean moment — it changes the atmosphere of a marriage. Every month begins to feel like a verdict being handed down.
I told myself we were in it together. I believed that for a long time.
But even back then, there were things I noticed and chose to explain away.
Michael didn’t just want a baby.
He wanted a son.
At first it sounded like the kind of fantasy some men carry until reality corrects them. He’d say things like, “My boy is going to play baseball with me” and “I need a son to carry things forward.” I’d laugh and say he was getting ahead of himself. Sometimes he laughed too
Sometimes he didn’t.
