Infertile & Querying
STRUGGLING TO CONCEIVE WHILE SEEKING REPRESENTATION
Struggling to conceive while seeking representation.
GROWING up, in the absence of any sort of formalized religion, I used to pray to my dead grandparents. I would ask them for two things, but never both at the same time: to be a mother and to be a writer. The writer part was simple. I always wanted to be a writer, and I kept journals and created stories from the time I could read and write. But even as a child I understood this to be a lofty ambition. This was why I resorted to prayer. I knew hard work would only get me so far. I would also need something else. A bit of magic, a bit of luck.
My aspirations toward motherhood were a bit more complex. As a child I never dreamed of having babies and settling into a life of maternal domesticity. Being raised by a proudly feminist mother, for better or worse, ingrained in me an acute distrust and (I realize, in retrospect, unfair) disapproval of young women who dreamed of wedding dresses and nursery decor. But I knew from a young age that I would one day want children of my own. And so I prayed, not because I was desperate to be a mom, but because I worried I might not have a choice, that I might not be able to—that I was infertile.
How odd that, even as a teenager, I possessed such a specific and resonant fear, despite having a pristine medical record and zero logical reason to suspect such a thing. What makes it even odder is that I am now, at age thirtyfour, looking at a third IVF cycle, after three painful years of failing to conceive. Somehow, even back then, I knew.
This past year I found myself in simultaneous pursuit of both of these childhood goals—having a baby and publishing a novel. As I cycled through the pills and injections and tests that would supposedly lead me one step closer to pregnancy, I was also querying agents, following the formulaic “protocol” I knew one must in order to achieve a book deal. In the beginning there was excitement. This could be the month. This could be the month an agent calls. This could be the month I conceive. This could be the month my life changes forever.
I would go down rabbit holes on message boards and blogs looking for the secrets to success from previously infertile mothers who had achieved pregnancy, from
authors who had cracked the query-letter code. I remember falling asleep at night, dreaming of telling my parents that they would be grandparents, or announcing to my friends that I was going to be an author.
In both cases this initial excitement quickly transformed into frustration and impatience. I hated that I had to wait. Wait for the right time in my cycle to take a pregnancy test. Wait for an agent to read my materials. Weeks and weeks of waiting, only to be met with failure. There was my period. There was the auto-response from the agent I’d been sure would love my work. And so I would try again, my hope renewed with the start of each new menstrual cycle, each fresh batch of queries. My protocol was better this time. My query was better this time.
Thus, the cycle would repeat itself, an endless series of hope, hard work (yes, trying to get pregnant can be hard work), and perseverance, followed by disappointment, dejection, and self-doubt. With a diagnosis of “unexplained” infertility, and little to no feedback from agents, I often felt like I was stuck trying to open a lock with endless possible combinations, tinkering with the numbers ever so slightly with each attempt in hopes of breaking in. In the absence of concrete answers, I speculated as to why I had failed. Maybe my first page wasn’t strong enough. I should revise it. Maybe I had an undiagnosed medical deficiency. I should start taking supplements. Anything to mimic some semblance of control.
The longer time went on and I didn’t have an agent, or a positive pregnancy test, the further away my dreams became. Meanwhile, it pained me to open up social media and see friends sharing baby photos and Publishers Marketplace screenshots. Why weren’t these things happening for me? Who was I if not a mother or a writer? Like so many of my fellow millennials, I’d grown up with a very distinct vision of what my life would look like by a certain point. When I arrived at my thirties and still hadn’t accomplished what I felt I ought to, I got a little scared. My whole life I’d been making my way down a neatly organized checklist that I believed would lead toward a happier, more fulfilling life. I had an education, a reliable support network of friends and family, and a steady day job that I enjoyed, but I’d always aspired to more. When you took these two things away—starting a family, building a career as a novelist—that meant that I was done. I had checked everything off. So then what was next? The uncertainty was unsettling. I no longer knew my purpose.
As the days continued to pass, I started to make concessions for myself, seesawing between wanting one dream over the other. On days plagued by literary rejection I’d think, So maybe I won’t be an author. Children and family are what matter most in life. Later, when another month would go by and I still wasn’t pregnant, I’d think, So what if I can’t have kids! Too many women have
children and lose all sense of themselves. I don’t want that. I’m going to be a writer.
Somewhere along the way I internalized the notion that I could not have both. Be both. I often wonder where this stemmed from, this belief that I could not be a mother and a writer. When we think of the choice between motherhood and career—in this case, authorship—we tend to imagine the woman choosing if and when to have children based on her goals and aspirations as a professional. Or we picture the new mom, struggling to take care of her infant and herself while also honoring her aspiration to write, plagued by guilt no matter what she does.
But my assumption seemed to transcend cultural or logistical constraints. I didn’t believe I could have both, because I wasn’t entirely convinced that I deserved both. Even as I write these words, I am acutely aware of my privilege and wouldn’t hold it against you, reader, for finding me insufferable. I’d already been granted so much in life. To ask for more felt greedy and ungrateful, and to have even one of these dreams come true felt like more than was fair to hope for.
BY EARLY March 2020, around the same time the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States, I’d sent dozens of queries, with a few notes of interest here and there, but zero offers of representation for my novel. In the middle of the month, my fertility clinic shut down, and my IVF cycle was indefinitely cancelled. I was left wondering if I would ever achieve either of my dreams. Enter the clover.
During the quarantine period, my husband and I instituted the daily ritual of a noontime walk around the neighborhood with our dog. It was one of the beautiful things that emerged from that time, for those of us fortunate enough to be able to work from home. I relished the opportunity to move my legs and breathe in fresh air in the middle of my workday. Why had I never done this when I was working at an office?
One day while we were walking, I spotted a four-leaf clover on the ground. I remember my husband marveling at my find, perplexed as to how I could spot such a thing while walking at a fairly brisk pace (my dog is a chronic leash puller). But I found it, and I picked it up, and I brought it home with me. I wouldn’t normally describe myself as superstitious, but finding that clover at that particular moment in my life, a moment when I felt a considerable lack of control over my immediate and long-term future, felt like a sign—a gift—and I took it seriously.
Given that we were in the midst of a devastating pandemic, my motivations were admittedly selfish. Should I yield the power of the clover to reopen my clinic, jump-start my IVF cycle, and fill my womb with the seed of a baby? Or was my luck better spent on getting an agent to finally fall in love with my manuscript? Which did I want more? I
had invested so much time, energy, and money into both dreams. Choosing felt impossible.
The novel I’d been querying wasn’t my first. I think I sent close to one hundred queries for an earlier project, each one carefully personalized, before giving up on it. Over the years I had also worked hard to fine-tune my craft, enrolling in costly writing workshops and spending my evenings and weekends submitting short stories to contests and literary magazines. I once applied to MFA programs, curating a portfolio of writing samples and soliciting the necessary recommendations from former teachers and colleagues. I’d gotten into one program but couldn’t stomach the cost. Did that mean I didn’t want it enough?
I had never calculated how much money I’d put toward conceiving a child—whatever two years’ worth of prenatal vitamins, a pair of basal body thermometers, and countless ovulation kits and pregnancy tests cost. Add to that all the diagnostic testing I had done through my clinic and the various medications they’d put me on, which amounted to thousands. And now I was about to embark on my first IVF cycle, which, despite insurance coverage, would be putting a serious dent in my bank account. Worse than the money was the immense emotional toll the struggle took on me.
I couldn’t decide. I put the clover underneath a heavy candle in my bedroom and tried to forget about it. It’s still there today, dried and flattened.
Later that spring I got the good news that my clinic would soon be reopening. We would initiate our IVF cycle in June. Maybe, just maybe, I would soon be pregnant. Around that same time, the incredible happened: An agent wrote saying she wanted to represent me. Just days later a second agent called. I had finally done it. I had secured representation as a writer.
My new agent was amazing. She and I quickly got to work on a few rounds of revision, which was a welcome distraction from the seemingly unending wait for my next fertility cycle to begin. In June we were ready to go on submission to publishers. When I asked my agent how communicative she would be during this process, her response was clear: “Light a candle and wait a month.” I was nervous, but I trusted her. And so, as one wait began, another ended. Days later I began my daily ovarian stimulation shots to prepare my body for an egg retrieval.
On Friday, July 3, my agent called with the best news I had ever received: A major publishing house wanted to buy my book. I was stunned. Euphoric. My dream of becoming a published author was going to come true. I kid you not, my embryo transfer was scheduled for the very next day. I remember because it was the Fourth of July, and I was hopeful there might be more fireworks in store for me that year. As I waited for the results of my pregnancy test, I allowed myself to consider the
impossible: Could I really have both at the same time? The book and the baby?
No. I could not. The next pregnancy test was negative, and none of the other embryos we had collected met the clinic’s criteria for freezing. I’d used up all my luck on the book deal. We’d come out of our first IVF cycle with nothing. At least I still have the book,I thought.
Sometimes I wonder: What if I had gotten pregnant when I’d originally wanted to, three years ago? I don’t think I would have been able to finish my manuscript, let alone query agents and land a book deal. Would my shot at authorship have faded away forever, destined to become a failed and abandoned dream? I don’t know, and it’s futile to speculate, but I like to think I would have kept on trying, just as I am now still trying to start a family.
It has been well over a year since the start of the pandemic, and in that time, it feels like all of my closest friends have had babies. They haven’t. But it can hurt to go online and see all the posted baby photos of those who have (just as my own news of a book deal probably felt like a punch in the gut for my yet-to-be-published writer friends). And yet I know that despite their happy Instagram portrayals, many of my new mom friends and family members have dealt with their own bouts of sadness and even depression. Their babies have brought them pure joy—of this there is no doubt—but I can see that they are tired and at times lonely.
I wonder if things will be similar after I give birth to my book, buildup and excitement met by exhaustion and a harsh reality check. I’ve been warned to temper my expectations, to prepare myself for letdown. I suppose that’s how it always is, our dreams never exactly what we pictured. The beauty, I have learned, truly is in the struggle—the clawing and the fighting and the testing of the human spirit.
In the end I still want both, and it’s baffling to me that there are people out there who have gotten book deals without ever querying, or fallen pregnant without even trying. It feels unfair. But I also don’t want to be that person who has everything handed to them. Does anyone like those people? The people I respect and admire most in my life are those who have faced adversity and pushed on.
One of my friends in my infertility support group once asked, “What if we are putting ourselves through all this torture for nothing?” It’s a frightening thought. But as painful as this journey has been, there is no scenario in which I emerge with nothing. I have gained knowledge, patience, strength, and compassion that I believe will make me a better, more resilient writer and, yes, mother. Because just as there are many ways to publish a book, there are many ways to become a mother, and I am confident that someday, somehow, I will find my way, no matter what it takes. I will have both.