“Did you have twins the old fashioned way?” the clerk at the store asked while beaming at my two beautiful, healthy 2-month-old girls.
“I had them the new fashioned way,” I said with a smile.
Yes, I have been blessed with twins — thanks to phenomenal doctors, incredible persistence, and a miracle that will always be beyond my comprehension. The era we live in is amazing and challenging all at the same time.
During some health challenges in my 20s, it was difficult to see my friends grow their families and not be ready to do so myself. By my mid 30s, I was physically healthy enough to have a child. But after six months of trying, I was not seeing progress. Anyone over 35 is considered “advanced maternal age,” so my OB sent me to Boston IVF. As it turned out, I had an ovarian cyst and endometriosis that required surgery.
Then, I got pregnant! Ecstatic, we started to take weekly belly pictures — even though my stomach was completely flat.
When we went for my seven week ultrasound, we learned there was no heartbeat — a miscarriage, likely due to a common genetic abnormality. I celebrated that I could, indeed, get pregnant and that my body naturally rejected that which was not healthy.
And yet, for someone who is very social and verbal, I felt speechless. I needed time to heal. And my healing couldn’t happen until I realized that miscarriage was a true loss — a loss of my hopes and my dreams for a future. Before I could heal and generate new hope, I needed to grieve and mourn the prospect of motherhood that had been at my fingertips.
A wise friend suggested I give it six months. I needed to bring myself back to life. After all, if I wasn’t loving life, how could I bring new life into this world?
Once I began to see that I was, indeed, strong enough to endure a miscarriage, I realized I was strong enough for IVF. When moving forward, I wanted to do it as effectively as possible, which meant PGD — pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Though we were not known carriers of genetic abnormalities, I wanted to avoid additional miscarriages and the difficult emotional and physical healing processes. I was skeptical about components like gender selection; instead, my focus was on achieving a healthy pregnancy.
I was fortunate that my first round of IVF was successful. I was pregnant with twins! Now we had a new due date to look forward to. I promised myself that if I was blessed with twins I would advocate for others to receive support as I had.
My daughters, Zoe and Isabella, make every day a blessing, even if motherhood is the hardest job I have ever had!
Now, I encourage others to share their stories. No matter what your journey to motherhood looks like — whether you’re just starting out, you’re on the other side of it, or things simply haven’t worked out as you’d hoped — we can learn from one another and, in turn, get closer to healing and fulfilling our dreams.
Becca Shimshak serves as the executive director of Uprooted: A Jewish Response to Infertility. She and her husband, Steve, live in Needham, where they are raising their twin daughters, Isabella Rose and Zoe Ann.
