We understand. The desire to achieve pregnancy and start a family is powerful. The yearning to have life growing in you becomes even more intense for families struggling with infertility. Each failed attempt at pregnancy is heartbreaking and increases your desperation to become a mother.

Elizabeth Rohm (an actress from American Hustle, Heroes, The Client List and Law & Order) understands as well and experienced the infertility rollercoaster first hand. She wrote about her experiences in the book “Baby Steps: Having the Child I Always Wanted (Just Not as I Expected).

Due to prematurely old eggs, Rohm was unable to conceive naturally. In her book she expresses where her mind was after discovering her infertility issues.

“Who would have ever predicted that this would happen to me? I was healthy, I exercised, I wasn’t overweight. Why would I have medical problems? Didn’t I do everything right! Did I do something to cause this? Was it my fault? Was I just a victim of fate? A nasty trick? The girl who wasn’t allowed to achieve her dreams? Was I not worthy of love? Was I not worthy of a family? Frankly, it sucked. Forget postpartum depression, this was prepartum depression. I admit it was a little bit of a pity party.”

Faced with a difficult decision of what to do, Rohm turned to Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) as her next step on the road to achieving pregnancy. After an expensive, $20,000 IVF Cycle, her dream came true.

“The morning the nurse called to give me the results of the blood test after the embryo transfer, I was sitting in a white chaise longue on the bottom floor of our home, thinking, daydreaming, wondering, trying to be calm. I was in a sort of a dark reverie, imagining a future without a baby, or the long road that might lead to one if this try didn’t work. Having an actual baby, evening being pregnant, felt remote and impossible, a fading glimmer.

Then the phone rang. The nurse said something into my ear. I wasn’t sure I had heard her correctly. I asked her to repeat it. She said it clearly, emphasizing each word:

“You are pregnant.”

“What?”

At first I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t feel pregnant. I hadn’t experienced any intuitive tickles or a feeling of psychic knowing. I stared down at my stomach. I closed my eyes and tried to feel the existence of another life inside me. It was an unreal moment. I sat very still for a long time. Then I carefully laid my palm on my stomach. I couldn’t believe it. But I’d known all along that I was really just that empty vessel. And now…

Not empty?

I wonder how many babies. My palm moved over my belly in gentle circles, my first maternal act. I knew that they had implanted four. Four successful embryo had developed from the eight eggs they had extracted. How many babies? I would find out soon enough. I let the quiet and the knowledge sink slowly in, filling me with a calm sense of wonderment. Pregnant. Pregnant. 

Then I thought of Ron. He had to be next to know, of course. He had hoped and longed and despaired right along with me, and I know we had done it at last. As he had said, “The method doesn’t matter.” We had done it. We had made a baby. Should I wait until he got home from work? Should I throw him a party? Where was the ticker-tape parade? I felt like there should be at least confetti, raining down from the rafters. 

The house seemed immensely quiet in the face of this grand news. I felt the sudden need to speak. I couldn’t wait. It couldn’t wait another minute. 

He picked up on the third ring. 

I blurted it out, without a lead-in: “I’m pregnant!”

“What? You are? Really?”

“I’d better be. We just paid twenty thousand dollars.” The bitterness in my voice surprised me. In the moment I’d expected to be only about joy and celebration, I recognized that disappointment was mixed in, too. I was still grieving the loss of the fantasy, that love + sex= baby. But what did it matter. A baby is a baby is a baby. “No, that’s not what I mean,” I corrected myself. “I mean, Yes! Yes, yes, yes. We did it.”

Eight months later (after a premature delivery due to amniotic fluid leaking), Rohm gave birth to her daughter Easton, fulfilling her dream of motherhood.

The Embryo Adoption Awareness Center comprehends the longing women, like Rohm, face when struggling to achieve pregnancy. We believe embryo adoption is a viable solution that many couples have never heard about.

Through embryo adoption thousands of women have reached their dreams of pregnancy and starting a family. It’s possible for you to have the same exhilaration Rohm wrote about when she found out she was pregnant. Embryo adoption is also financially appealing, costing an average of $14,000. It also allows families with remaining embryos to donate them to a family like yours. If you are considering purchasing human eggs or sperm, embryo adoption allows you and your spouse an equal genetic connection to the children you bear– none!

To learn more about embryo adoption, how pregnancy is possible, and how it can be affordable for women facing infertility please visit EmbryoAdoption.org.

We understand and we can help.

Excerpted from Baby Steps: Having the Child I Always Wanted (Just Not as I Expected) by Elisabeth Rohm. Available from Da Capo Lifelong Books, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2013.

(Please read comment policy before commenting)

Loading...