I really feel depressed. I’m even in the OBGYN medical residency training program with access to it all including the specialists! And yet, NOTHING – NOT ONE THING is working!! I decided to take a week off work to go home and visit my parents for a well-needed rest!

My Mum is my ROCK. She immediately sees my pain: my marriage is falling apart. I tell her it’s because I feel like I’m a failure as a woman because I can’t get pregnant. Mum and I talk about everything. Through the tears and the laughs and more tears, Mum is so supportive. She knows exactly what to say.

We talk about that fateful surgery long ago when I was in grade 8. Rushed to the Emergency Room on a sunny Saturday morning because of sudden overwhelming belly pain. I have emergency surgery as it appears to be my appendix.

Mum asks me about the 6-week follow-up visit with the surgeon. Do I remember anything? All that came to mind was that he removed a normal appendix and a fallopian tube that was all knotted on itself, dying, “necrotic” he said. Then he told us – looking at my Mum, that “she will struggle to get pregnant”.

Mum, in her best imitation of an indignant 13-year-old Karen, reminds me that I said: “NO one, not even him, is going to tell me that I can’t have my two babies. A boy first, then a girl, just like you Mummy!” I laugh through my tears as we hug.

I get back and my husband and we stop doing all of the “medical advice & science stuff”. I didn’t give the whole getting pregnant thing much thought, other than I had simply decided that it IS GOING TO happen.