Proud To Be An Infertility Survivor
by Tracey Sara Offutt

When I was a little girl rocking my baby dolls, no one warned me that real life might be much more complicated and difficult than it was in the land of Make Believe. I spent most of my younger years hearing how easy it was to get pregnant when I didn't want or mean to, planning my birth control strategies, trying not to get pregnant before I was ready... and then I was finally older and ready to throw caution to the wind and make a baby with my husband in the privacy of our bedroom, and life came crashing down around me when I found out that we could not do that. For all of those reasons, infertility is something I survived. It's not something I just "have" or even something I "had" after I was lucky enough to end up pregnant and, ultimately, to become a mother. Even after I am done having my children, I will always consider myself a person who "was infertile" and who "survived/overcame infertility." For all these reasons, I am proud to be among the very special group of people who have survived my infertility.

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