The Fertility Diaries 2026
1 in 6 couples worldwide are diagnosed with infertility*. This number represents more than a population. It represents a deeper impact that affects an individual, couples, and relationships. At The Fertility Center, we recognize that the journey through infertility can be very overwhelming. This year for The Fertility Diaries contest, we received almost 100 entries. These essays represent a variety of challenges that our patients face during their infertility journey. We invite you to read our five finalist’s entries for a small glimpse into what so many of our patients face each day. After reading, we hope you’ll take a minute to support one of these couples with your vote (voting opens Sunday, April 19, 2026). Thank you for your support and helping us raise awareness during National Infertility Awareness Week 2026.
(*http://www.resolve.org)
Kaitlynn Monroe
Sometimes infertility is a lifelong journey; you just don’t know it until you’re old enough to want kids.
The first time I went to the doctor for debilitating abdominal pain, I was a freshman in high school. It was 2011. A searing pain in my left side had me doubled over on my bedroom floor. My mom, shocked by any admission of pain from me, rushed me to urgent care. While there, they performed a vaginal ultrasound and pelvic exam. I was absolutely terrified, and I held my mom’s hand. The pain, combined with the violation of privacy, felt overwhelming and humiliating. They told me it was likely just a ruptured cyst and sent me home with Vicodin.
For the next nine years, I cycled through ERs, urgent cares, gynecologists, and even a colonoscopy, searching for answers to my persistent, life-altering abdominal pain. Finally, in February 2020, I got one. During a diagnostic laparoscopy, my OBGYN found severe endometriosis. My left ovary and fallopian tube were adhered in multiple directions, fused to my sigmoid colon, which itself was scarred to my abdominal wall. I also had Allen-Masters windows, or deep retraction pockets, associated with deep infiltrating endometriosis. I noticed improvements in my pain almost immediately.
If I’m being honest, at that time I wasn’t thinking about the fertility implications of the disease. I had only been with my husband for about 2.5 years at that point, and we were more than happy to wait on having kids. We thought we had time. We were barely 24, and watching your sister give birth will convince you (or scare you) to wait. Children were a “someday” conversation, something we talked about in passing, assuming it would always be there when we were ready. I was just relieved to feel heard and to finally have an explanation for the constipation, dysmenorrhea, and chronic pelvic pain that had defined so much of my adolescence.
Two years later, everything changed. For months, I felt pain increasing again, at first a dull ache, and then sharp, pulling on my right side. Doctors had told me for years, “You’re okay. It’s just part of being a woman,” so I ignored it. By early February 2022, the pain had increased, and with it came a fever. I convinced myself it was a combination of norovirus and ovulation. That easily explained the fever, lack of appetite, and right-sided pain. I stayed with that thought even when a deep, internal pain started to occur every time I had to empty my bladder.
When I finally spoke to my primary care physician over telehealth, he told me, “You’re likely just ovulating. Fevers aren’t common with ovulation, but you never know.” The next day, I was in urgent care. They found a cyst just smaller than a peach that was hemorrhaging internally and sent me home with strict instructions to go to the ER if anything worsened.
By 5 a.m. the next day, I was in excruciating pain. My abdomen burned, my fever was nearly 103, I had sweated through my pajamas and bedding, and I could barely stand upright. At the hospital, imaging showed a cyst, free fluid, and inflammation of my small intestine. The imaging results, combined with high white blood cell counts, pointed towards pelvic inflammatory disease with a possible tubo-ovarian abscess. Within an hour, I was in emergency surgery.
They found my abdomen filled with pus, my right ovary adhered to my pelvic wall, my right fallopian tube severely enlarged and oozing pus, and my left tube damaged. Despite the severity of the inflammation and the rupture of the abscess, the surgeon was able to save my reproductive organs. I spent the next few days bloated and sweating in a hospital bed, FaceTiming my husband as IV antibiotics dripped into my arm.
When my attending physician made his rounds, I asked about the plan to start birth control again. He told me that based on what they saw during surgery, it was unlikely I would ever need birth control again. IVF would likely be my only option.
Later, when I was alone, I tried to make sense of a life that didn’t look like the one I had always imagined.
The next time I spoke with my husband, we didn’t know what to say to one another. It didn’t feel real. I told him that maybe our life didn’t have to include children. We didn’t need those pale, red-headed babies we always joked about having. We could have animals, be the best aunt and uncle, build meaningful careers, and travel.
But no matter how much I said those things, they didn’t become more true.
Having kids wasn’t just a passing desire. It was a dream we had carried for years, unexpectedly slipping out of reach.
I went home four days later and held my three-month-old nephew. I finally cried, wondering if I would ever get the chance to hold a child of my own.
Trying to be proactive, I had an HSG that April, and my tubes were open. Hope started to build. In the spring of 2024, we began working with The Fertility Center. We decided to check my tubes again – all clear. We moved forward with another laparoscopy, removing more endometriosis, but dense adhesions remained, adhering my left ovary and tube to my sigmoid colon.
After conversations with doctors at TFC, we decided to try naturally, hoping the process would be effortless. Unfortunately, my cycles became increasingly irregular. The following summer, I went three months without a period. Excited about the missed period, I thought that maybe I was finally pregnant. However, multiple tests and an ultrasound proved I wasn’t.
Eager to start a family, we induced a cycle and began IUI with a local clinic that works with TFC. That’s when we learned something new: I also had PCOS. After 14 years of symptoms, I finally had another answer.
Of the four medicated cycles we attempted, three ovulated from my left ovary, which is still compromised by dense adhesions. The final cycle was perfect: a strong follicle on the right, ideal timing, great sperm parameters, but it didn’t work.
Given the odds of success with endometriosis, the prior infection, and limited ovulation from my functional side, my husband and I made the decision to move on to IVF.
It wasn’t a simple decision. IVF feels big in every sense. It asks more of you medically, emotionally, and financially. The cost alone made me hesitate. I made spreadsheets, broke everything down, called our insurance, and tried desperately to measure the price of something that came with no guarantee.
One day, I found myself telling my husband, once again, that maybe we could have a full life without children. That it was just too much money, too uncertain.
After listening to me, he said something I’ll never forget.
“In forty years, would you rather have the money or a family?”
It cut through all the noise.
For so long, I had been trying to prepare myself for a life that might not include children, trying to find peace in that version of our future. And while I believe that life could still be full and meaningful, I had to be honest about what I truly wanted.
I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering “what if.” I wanted to try.
Early this year, we began the IVF process. Excited to begin, we had the mock transfer and sonohysterogram in early March, only to find yet another hurdle: a uterine polyp that needs to be removed before we can proceed.
There is still a long road ahead. But the truth is, I’ve been on this road since I was 15 years old.
It took nine years to be diagnosed with endometriosis. Fourteen years to be diagnosed with PCOS. Fourteen years of being told my experience as a woman was normal.
Fertility awareness shouldn’t start at 30, when you’re finally ready to have a baby. It should start when a 15-year-old girl is doubled over on her bedroom floor, knowing something isn’t right and just wanting to be believed.
I hope sharing my story empowers the next generation of women to advocate for their fertility long before they’re ready to start a family. I wish someone had taught me that my reproductive future began with my very first period.
Alexis Phillips
A Love Story
By Alexis Phillips
We sat at our kitchen table scrolling through donor profiles like we were online dating for a man neither of us wanted to meet. As a same-sex couple, building a family meant entering a process many people never have to think about. We found ourselves learning the language of sperm banks, donor profiles, vial types, and treatment plans. It was clinical, expensive, and strangely intimate. Even then, I could already see why my wife and I make such a good team.
I work in the medical field, so I went straight to family history, genetic screening, and every measurable detail I could evaluate. My wife was drawn to personality, warmth, and the person behind the profile. I was looking at data; she was looking at character. Somewhere between my hyperfocus and her tenderness, I remember thinking that this is what parenting will look like with us. Thoughtful. Intentional. Shaped by two different kinds of care. That realization surprised me.
For most of my life, I did not picture myself having children. I have twelve siblings, and I spent too much of my childhood taking care of other people to romanticize what it means to raise them. By the time I was old enough to imagine adulthood for myself, family did not feel like a dream. It felt like responsibility. It felt like being needed. It felt like something I had already given so much of myself to.
Then I met my wife.
She loves me in a way that makes me feel safe, known, and deeply cared for. She nourishes me by cooking for me, cares for our home, and somehow manages to finish the half-done projects I leave behind. She supports my ambitions, pushes me to be a better person, and makes even the ordinary parts of life feel full of joy. She loves my family without hesitation or keeping score, as though they are simply hers too. Her family has also welcomed me with that same kind of love, making me feel as though I have always belonged there.
Being loved by her changed the way I thought about family. For the first time, it felt less like obligation and more like safety. With her, I could imagine motherhood as something tender, chosen, and shared. She made me want what I had never really wanted before: a child.
Not in theory. With her.
Before we got married, my grandmother was still trying to make sense of the fact that I was marrying a woman. At first, she said she would not come to our wedding. She did not believe in same-sex marriage. It was not vague discomfort. It was real to her. So was her grief. One of the things she said that has stuck with me is “but I always imagined you having a little girl”. I knew what she meant. She was not just talking about grandchildren. She was mourning the life she thought I would not get to have if I married a woman. In her mind, my marriage and motherhood had split apart. To her, choosing one meant giving up the other.
I told her the only thing I could: that I was loved, that I felt supported, and that she should be happy I was happy. She told me I was right. Then, almost unbelievably, we were picking out what she would wear to the wedding. She came. She chose love. She loved me, and she wanted me to be happy.
My grandmother died two weeks later. Now that sentence lives in me in more than one way. It carries the ache of what she could not understand at first. It carries the grace of the fact that she chose love anyway. And it carries the grief of knowing she will never get to see whether that little girl makes her way to us after all.
My wife and I have now had two unsuccessful IUIs. There is a strange kind of loneliness in that, especially as a same-sex couple. People often assume our difficulty begins and ends with logistics, as though donor sperm solves the whole story. As though access is the same thing as ease. As though wanting a child with another woman is enough to protect you from heartbreak. It does not.
There is still the hope, the monitoring, the timing, and the careful way you let yourself imagine something while trying not to. There are still the medications, the procedure, the wait, the private optimism, the crash. There is still the moment when another cycle does not work and you have to decide how long to sit with the disappointment before moving on to the next plan.
The word infertility can feel too blunt for experiences like ours, and yet it belongs here too. People often think of infertility as a story about bodies that do not cooperate, about diagnosis and defect, about a problem that can be neatly located in test results. But difficulty does not always arrive so cleanly. Sometimes it comes through cost, timing, medicine, and the sheer amount of effort required just to begin. Sometimes it comes through the quiet grief of doing everything you can and still ending up empty-handed.
Now we are moving on to IVF. I would be lying if I said that does not scare me. IVF feels heavier in every way; it is more expensive, more invasive, and more emotionally charged. But alongside that fear is something else too. It is remarkable that this exists at all. That science can make room for a life that would not be possible for us otherwise. There is something humbling about that. So, we are stepping into this next part with both awe and apprehension, knowing it asks a great deal of us, and grateful that it gives us another way to reach for the family we want.
The Fertility Center has helped with that. They have been knowledgeable and kind. They have explained the process without making us feel unusual, less legitimate, or as though we are asking for something outside the frame of what a family is supposed to be. That matters more than I expected. When so much of this process already feels vulnerable, it matters to be met without judgment. It matters to be treated not as an exception to family life, but as part of its reality.
What I wish more people understood is that infertility is not only a story about bodies that do not cooperate. It can also be a story about intention. About grief arriving in layers. About the strange intimacy of building a family from love, science, paperwork, appointments, and faith that has to keep rebuilding itself after disappointment. It is about two women sitting side by side trying to decide who will be called mommy and who will be called mama.
I never spent my life dreaming of motherhood. What changed me was not a sudden longing from nowhere. It was being loved so well that I could finally imagine giving that love forward. My wife made family feel less like obligation and more like safety. She made me believe that home could be gentle, and that a life like this could belong to me too.
My grandmother thought marrying a woman meant I might never have that little girl. But loving a woman was never the thing that stood between me and that life. If anything, it is the reason I began to want it. It is the reason I can imagine myself as a parent at all. The obstacle has never been love. Love is what made the dream possible.
So, this is a love story. It is a love story about my wife, whose steadiness changed the shape of my life. It is a love story about my grandmother, who could not understand at first but chose love anyway. And it is a love story about the family we are fighting for now, even before others can see it. Because family does not begin only when a child arrives. Sometimes it begins in the quiet, ordinary moments when two people decide they are ready to make room for someone else. Sometimes it begins in hope, in love, and in the choice to keep trying.
We do not have our child in our arms yet. But this story is already one of devotion, courage, and care. We have already built something real: a marriage strong enough to carry hope, heartbreak, and the dream of the life we are still reaching for.
And when that child finds us, they will be born into a story that began with love.
Erin Brzozowski
“Erin Barren is my cousin wuzin,” Becky sang, as Grandma crocheted in the living room, immortalized on a home video saved on my computer. Being called barren by your four-year-old cousin shouldn’t be taken as a prophecy, but 33 years later, it sure does feel like one.
Grandma taught me to crochet when I was in middle school. I took up the craft in earnest in my early 20s, when my cousins, friends, and younger brother started having babies. I’ve made baby blankets by the dozens and stuffed animals for so many birthdays, just waiting for a chance to make one for a baby of my own.
Except no baby came.
Eventually, we turned to science and IVF. After our first embryo transfer, the dreaded two-week wait loomed, and I needed to keep my hands and mind busy. Crochet was too easy, second-nature, and wouldn’t cut it. I went to a yarn shop and asked for a beginner knitting project. They gave me a set of needles and a ball of yarn. I was on my way to making my first scarf. I knit and purled, made mistakes, miscounted, ripped everything out, and started over. Within a month, I had a scarf but no baby. No positive test. No good news.
We went through another transfer. I came out with a headband and mittens, no baby. No luck.
I wore my first pair of hand-knit socks to this transfer. Lucky socks. The doctor complimented my socks and my perseverance. The next day, I wrapped myself in my scarf, headband, and mittens, wrapping myself in the love and hopefulness I put into each stitch. This was going to be the one. And it was! A positive test, and another! A six-week ultrasound, where we saw our little one’s heartbeat. We did it!
As I worked on my first sweater, I dreamed of starting the matching one for her as she grew inside me. She’d be born in October – perfect sweater weather. I started bookmarking other patterns – blankets and sweaters, booties and hats. Excited and nervous at our 8-week ultrasound, our hopes and dreams came crashing down. No heartbeat. A miscarriage. A mistake?
Becky came over, her belly swollen with her 4th baby. She brought me a care package – tea, ice cream, a candle, but most importantly, she held me as I cried. No one prepares you for this pain. I made a hat in protest.
I can’t undo this and get back to the spot where her heart stopped. Why do they call it a miscarriage? How did I carry her wrong?
Is it time to start over? Yes, I’ll make an appointment. I’ll look for rainbow blanket patterns for the baby born after the storm.