“I’ve grappled with this A LOT, especially when I chose to become more public with my infertility journey.

IVF is an easily definable and recognizable course of treatment. For some reason, IVF has almost become a standard of validity when it comes to infertility.

That’s not to say that women who go through IVF aren’t heroes - of course they are!! It is a tremendously brutal course of treatment, both physically and emotionally. At the same time though, IVF isn’t necessarily the right course of action for every couple going through infertility.

Or the only.

Once I finished my treatment for cervical scarring (which was pretty brutal in itself — an awake hysteroscopy with no pain relief where they cut out the scar tissue, which was so thick it broke the first pair of scissors, followed by 6 follow up hysteroscopies to poke through new scar tissue), we were basically left with unexplained infertility.

Our Rav did not want us to start with IVF yet, even after over two years of trying with more basic treatments. We listened to his guidance by *choice,* and I truly believe in our case he made the right call.

It was so frustrating to feel like we were wasting all this time when IVF would have likely worked, but thank G-d after many rounds

(and about 2.5 years) of clomid/letrozole/ovidrel injections, Hashem decided the time was right.

And then I had to grapple with feeling like a fraud... here I had shared my infertility story publicly, and I didn’t even have to do IVF.

But I’ve learned (with the help of therapy) that there is no hierarchy to infertility, just like there’s no hierarchy to pain.

We are all carrying so much baggage in the form of our hopes and dreams that it’s crazy we have to add on the more easily defined course of treatment.

And just to reiterate — this is not at all to take away from the incredible heroism of women who do go through IVF.

It’s just to say that IVF is not what makes your infertility “real.”

Also, it’s so easy to fall into the pattern of feeling like anyone who had to wait for less time or work less hard to have kids is somewhat of a fraud.

I think we’ve all been there. Because we’re carrying tremendous pain and when you’re in a place of pain, it can be hard to find grace.

So this is not to judge anyone for judging or feeling that way.

It’s just to tell the people who place those feelings on THEMSELVES...

that their pain is valid,

their journey is valid,

and it’s not IVF that makes it count.”