Becoming a father part III: The Infertility Ends

When my wife and I first started out trying to conceive, we did what we had always done, but this time without a net. It was new, different, and exciting. And unsuccessful. So we read a bit and decided to work be more focussed. "If it doesn't happen naturally, we can adopt." And were unsuccessful. So we went to see my wife's doctor. He put her on increasing doses of Clomid. "If it doesn't happen with pills, we can adopt. But we don't want to use injectables." And we were unsuccessful again and again. We tried an IUI. And were unsuccessful. Finally we went to see a specialist. One course of IUI after a course of injectables ("If it doesn't happen with injectables, we can adopt.") and we were successful. Three years after we started.

Each time we were unsuccessful we bumped ourselves up to the next level of intervention that we had never envisioned going to. Adoption was out there as an option of last resort, but we never really thought that we'd need to do it. We are young and healthy and in our primes. It had to happen eventually, right? It turns out that we needed a lot of help, but once we got it, we did well.