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At the age of 35, I found myself uncertain what to do with the rest of my life. I attended a “What do you want workshop in NYC” where I began the journey of creating the life I wanted. I met my husband of 15 years, started my business Interthread Embroidery, and dreamed of becoming a mother. We bought a “starter house” in Huntington looking to fill the bedrooms.

The months came and went with no pregnancy. We buried statues in the yard, took my temperature, and listened to any suggestions that would help.

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Mother’s Day became an extremely painful day. I would buy plants days before and stayed at home planting so I could avoid hearing “Happy Mother’s Day”.

We were going through every stage of infertility there was and we had a team of people cheering for us. I was amazed at how many couples were going through the same process and saddened at how depressed many in the waiting rooms were. Robert and I brought a boom box to play music during an insemination in celebration of the possibility of what was about to happen. My parents even took part of this by delivering Robert’s sperm to the doctor because we both had obligations that early morning.

When we were unsuccessful, we decided to try the next step: in-vitro fertilization. Again, we had family and friends that we kept updated with the number of eggs and that prayed with us, that this would be it. We were all excited and positive at the possibility. Robert was a little too excited about how many shots he was going to able to give me a day. Once again that dreaded period came. So it was back to the shots for another try. The second time brought a positive result, but ended up being a negative positive. Again, it was not the result we had been praying for.

Tests determined that in our case, my eggs were just too old. I began to feel the pain of what this meant. I knew how much Robert wanted to be a Dad. That’s what he would tell his Mom when she asked” What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I wanted to try just one more time, changing doctors, this would be the third. I went to the appointment, with all my records and sat through the consultation, determined it would happen this time. I was at the desk making my next appointment when a woman came out of the doctor’s office and had that look; she just found out she was pregnant.

As I absorbed the look of elation from the woman leaving the fertility doctor’s examining room, I knew instantly she had been successful; she was pregnant. Emotions overtook me as the results of my earlier fertility treatments resurfaced. The repeated failures at not becoming pregnant had weighed heavy on my heart, my soul, my very being. I never started my third round of fertility treatments that day. Instead, I went home knowing I could not bear to hear another “No”.

For over a year, I was in mourning. Not only was my dream of motherhood shattered, so was that of Robert’s. I loved my husband dearly and I cannot begin to explain the pain I felt knowing that I could not fulfill his childhood dream of being a father.

We were married at Oheka Castle, honeymooned in South Africa, bought a home in Huntington, and even rescued a four-month old Vizssla named Jake. Life was great! Robert had given me so much joy. He made my dreams come true and I wanted to do the same for him.

So life went on. We began renovating our home. Robert and two friends started a film company out of Florida and while my business was growing, we got another puppy!

We tried to accept the fact that parenthood was not in our future, but often on Monday mornings as Robert left for another workweek, we both found ourselves in tears. When he came home the discussion would start again. “What was next for us, what would be our legacy, what would we leave behind, did we want to adopt?” At one point Robert was not open to it and at this point I was not.

After almost two years of this we got “crispy” as Robert would call it. He came home one weekend and we were sitting out back catching up and (this is one of this moments I remember vividly) he said, “Honey I need to ask you a question.” He wanted to talk about adopting. “I will ask you this one question and then I promise I will never bring it up again.” His question, “If we were 80 years old looking back what would you say?” I began to cry instantly, I knew I wanted to be a Mom!

Today we have three healthy, intelligent, caring, beautiful daughters that are the apple of Robert’s eye and the joy of my life. They do not carry the genetic make up of Robert or me, but they carry the essence of our love!