Between the First Candle and the Last.

Let’s start this one here with these inspired words posted on the first night of Chanukah by my friend Ketriellah Goldfeder.

“You don't need to solve all of someone's problems to add value to their life.

You don't need to say the perfect thing to bring comfort.

You don't need to know all the details to take the next step.

You don't need to get it right the first time. You don't need to get all the likes to be loved. Light that first candle.”

I love this, for so many reasons. And in particular these were just the words I needed to hear to be willing to share again about our fertility journey.

Because I had wanted my next post about making a baby to be, “we’re pregnant!”, but that’s not where we are in this story.

Instead we’re still in the unresolved, unsolved, unknown, not getting it right part of the story.

Somewhere between the first candle and the last and I didn’t want to feel like I needed to keep waiting for things to be “perfect” to share.

I believe too much in the value of sharing from the messy, the imperfect, the middle, and yet I found myself waiting to finally have some good news to share before I felt worthy of saying something.

So currently, on the other side of many tears, we have opened ourselves to a new possibility for conceiving and an alternate path to creating a family.

We are officially waiting for an egg donor match.

We simply couldn’t afford to keep trying to conceive doing IVF with my own eggs.

While there are no guarantees with donor eggs, there are better chances.

So, that’s where we are.

Somewhere between the first candle and the last.

It feels surprisingly good to share this here, to share mid-way, to start from exactly where I am.

It can feel so shameful and isolating to go through fertility treatments. To experience all the grief and loss and pain and despair while showing up in our daily lives for clients and social events like it’s life as usual.

I hope sharing my story here brings comfort to someone who may be struggling through fertility challenges, who may feel alone or ashamed, who’s still in the middle, somewhere between that first candle and the last.

I’d love to hear from you.

Whether or not you've had fertility challenges, what’s your “first candle” these days? Where are you between that first candle and the last?

One final note worth mentioning, is just how inspired I was by a recently released documentary called “One More Shot”, about infertility, IVF and the many roads to parenthood. I recommend it highly if you or someone you know has suffered through infertility.

In it a couple documents their own very personal and honest journey through IVF as well as following other families who’ve struggled to have children.

In the end, between all the families, representing adoption, egg donation, embryo donation, IVF, and even surprise natural pregnancy against all odds, after multiple miscarriages and dashed hopes, the message was clear. There are a multitude of valid and amazing ways to make a family.