Thank you to everyone for the amazing response about the baby news! (See the original announcement here, I posted about it in December.) In addition to the glorious books that rained down on Baby Macdonald, which I will speak to in a moment, I also heard from a lot of people who have walked their own complicated paths toward their family goals. This is exactly why I have no problem talking about the IVF process. Too often, people who struggle can’t help but feel alone, whether it’s because they feel ashamed about their problems, or others have made them feel that way. This is horrible. We all have our crosses to bear, and yet there’s great strength in community. None of us are truly alone if we choose not to be, and I’m really glad I decided to speak up.

Human connection is one of the great joys of life, and it was a real honor to hear from my blog readers who have done fertility treatments, who’ve adopted, who’ve lost pregnancies and children, or who still haven’t reached their desired destinations. It was incredibly touching to share in such intimate stories with my readers.

As for the books, oh the books! My husband, Todd, and I were moved to tears by the generosity and love pouring in from you blog readers. We stuffed Baby’s bookshelf twice over! My favorite part, however, was hearing from readers. One sent me something that I’d originally seen as part of a Writer’s Digest webinar critique. That little manuscript went on to sell at auction, and a few years later, there it was on my doorstep as a published book, complete with an inscription to Baby. Talk about coming full circle! Another package arrived from a very well-established author who I have long, long, long admired, with an incredibly touching note. I had no idea this author was one of my readers!

To all of you who sent books, I have done my best to send a handwritten Thank You card. Some Amazon deliveries would only let me send a digital Thank You where I couldn’t find a return address (ugh, so impersonal!). There were also a few packages where I accidentally discarded the return label before I had a chance to note who was responsible for what. If the wonderful readers who sent me IVAN THE TERRIER, ALL THE WORLD, and LITTLE GREEN would please email me, I’d love your address so I can send a proper note of gratitude. If you sent something and also haven’t heard back with a card, please let me know.

Now I’m in the home stretch, only a week away from our due date. I have no idea when the baby will start the eviction process. It could be today (!!!). It could be three weeks from now. (Oh, how I hope it’s not three weeks from now, though.) All this is to say that the blog will go a little silent for the next two weeks. But I’ll be back with an update once there’s something to share. Coming back to this blog after taking a hiatus in 2015 has been one of my great joys, so don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging for too long!

Over the years, I have shared a lot of personal stuff with you, my dear writer-readers. Pets, tattoos, moves to Brooklyn, moves from Brooklyn, moves back to Brooklyn, and finally from Brooklyn for good (oy!). I mean, I still have people ask me about Sushi, a beloved cat I lost in 2011. It’s really been an honor to show up at the keyboard and share a bit of myself, a bit of my ideas, and a lot of my heart with you every week or so.

Now it’s time for me to reveal a very exciting personal development. Don’t worry, I’m still writing here. (They can wrench this domain name from my shriveled hands in 50 years!) I’m still working with my stable of amazing freelance editorial clients, and I couldn’t be happier. But in 2016, my family is finally growing with the addition of a baby in March! The gender will be a surprise.

This news is incredible for my husband and I, because of the road we took to get here. Everyone has struggles, and this was, unfortunately, one of ours. I have wanted to be a mother for as long as I can remember. Growing up an immigrant only child in a single-parent household was very lonely, and I always imagined that I’d one day fill my home with children, the more the merrier! But then we wandered into what I can only call hell: infertility.

I have made many lifestyle changes over the years to put my health first. I’m pretty young. I’m motivated. Every single time we failed to conceive, it felt like an incredible failure of body and spirit. When infertility is suspected, the burden usually falls on the woman because a whole lot more can go “wrong” in our systems as far as reproduction is concerned. There’s basically one test for men, while women sometimes spend years investigating the equipment. Every month, I sunk into a despair that words can’t exactly describe. This went on for two and a half years. That may seem like a blip. But when a child is what you want most in the world, and deep in your heart is the fear that you may never get to have that irreplaceable human experience, time almost seems to move backward. And since all of our tests came back perfectly normal, we didn’t even have a good explanation, which was maddening.

After cycling through half a dozen doctors (“You’re young! Just keep trying! Are you sure you’re doing it right?”), tens of thousands of dollars of tests, kits, and procedures (insurance becomes real scarce as soon as they hear “infertility”), acupuncture, therapy, yoga, even chakra-alignment (I’m from San Francisco, guys, and I was desperate…), we finally washed like ragged castaways on the shores of a fertility clinic. There, they administered an easy $300 test that nobody else would do because failing it was so unlikely. And we finally had our answer: my husband has a fluke sperm issue, so rare it doesn’t have a name, and so significant that we literally have a 0.0% chance of conceiving naturally. What are the odds!

That was the best/worst appointment of my life. The best, because we finally had closure, and a game plan. Luckily, IVF and a related procedure (ICSI) are made for exactly this scenario. The worst, because don’t nobody tell me I have a 0.0% chance at anything! Unfortunately, this one was bigger than my stubbornness. And it turned out that we tried for those two and a half years completely in vain. This was a tough pill to swallow. On the bright side, we ended up doing IVF in June, had a brilliant response, and I got a positive pregnancy test on my birthday in July!

Now, as I near the third trimester, we feel so lucky. I mean, infertility was basically the worst thing I’ve ever been through, and I’m still grieving the fact that, whenever we want to have a child, we have to roll up to a clinic with our wallets open instead of doing it the old-fashioned way. In fact, because I’ve had such stunningly bad results, I no longer believe that babies happen after unprotected sex! 🙂 But there are those who have much more complex issues, who struggle for much longer. Our one IVF cycle (costing as much as a new car out of pocket), believe it or not, was pretty much the best case scenario in the advanced reproductive technology big leagues. (Most insurance counts infertility treatments as non-essential, sort of like a boob job, unless you have a great plan. But my husband is a small business owner and I’m a freelancer, so we pay handsomely for our minimal coverage.)

Now that I have that off my chest, I really waffled about writing this next part of the post. I’ve always seen my role in your lives as a guide and friend. It feels wrong to ask for anything in return because of the rich personal rewards that my work brings me every day. But I’m humbly reaching out to you now with a request:

Books are why we’re all here. And I would love to welcome our baby with a library of classic and contemporary children’s books that builds on what I’ve collected over my career. With IVF and my husband’s dream of opening a restaurant coming true this year, we simply can’t feather our literary nest. I want to flood this child’s life with love and beauty and letters. I want to greet them with good vibes (and good books) from the community I’ve created. This baby has been the dream of my heart for as long as I can remember, and now he or she is finally coming. If you have any new or pre-loved books, for any childhood stage, that you’re compelled to send along to us, it would mean the absolute world. I would personally be so grateful. Please write a note inside so that you can become a part of our story.

(I’ve removed the address here because it was for a temporary mailbox. If you are still interested in sending something, please email me at mary@kidlit.com. Thank you!)

If material things, well, aren’t your thing, I was recently reminded by a freelance editorial client of my passion for the work of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, where I used to volunteer while living in San Francisco. I just started training as a volunteer for the Minnesota chapter. Already, this baby has inspired so much positive change and hope in our lives. In the same spirit, maybe he or she will inspire you as we head into the holiday season, to share some joy with a few extra hearts. You can find Make-A-Wish volunteer information and links to your local chapter here.

ETA: Because somebody asked, you can find our baby registry here.

Also, I feel obligated to add that, while many options for growing a family exist, I felt very strongly, being an immigrant with only three living blood relatives in this or any other country, that I wanted to try for biological children. It’s a deeply sacred, personal choice that every aspiring parent makes differently. For example, newborn adoption costs about as much as a round of IVF (or more) and there’s a lengthy approval process that could’ve added years to our journey.