Sophie Schillaci
- Jul 10, 2020
- 2 min read

The Two Sides of Infertility: How it 'Made Me a Better Person'

Let me tell you a story about two mothers.

Friends for more than twenty years, one had concrete plans and a specific timeline for her future. The other, slightly less so. The former, much to her surprise, struggled to become pregnant. She saw specialists, received countless injections and medicines, underwent procedures before finally welcoming a perfect baby girl via in vitro fertilization last December.

The latter, meanwhile, gave birth to a daughter and then became pregnant with a second child within that time. She knew of her friend's fertility struggles and felt guilty, wanting to help but with no idea how.

The latter is me. The former, my friend Jill.

Jill is one of the hardest workers I know. She's a lawyer, fiercely supportive of her friends, an excellent communicator and, now, a wonderful mother. She's long been a champion of the work that I'm doing, and I'm fortunate to have her in my corner.

But I know that witnessing my first pregnancy, and seeing my daughter come into this world and grow was incredibly painful for her. She did her very best to never let it show.

So I was thrilled and honored that she reached out to me about helping to share her fertility journey publicly. Jill wanted to be open and honest about her story in the hopes that it would help even one woman going through a similar situation. For her, one of the biggest shocks In undergoing fertility treatments was seeing how long the wait lists were. She had no idea that there were so many women right there in her community, quietly suffering. Why hadn't she heard about this?

She and I talked at length about her journey with infertility and IVF.

We talked about how to be a good friend to someone going through infertility (and the one thing you should NEVER say, but people still ALWAYS do). We talked about how the first time she met my daughter, she was blindsided and went home sobbing. We talked about how she lied in order to avoid seeing us again.

We talked about how infertility made her a better person.

We talked about so much more, and we recorded our conversation to share with you.

You can watch the interview below and, if you'd like to skip over any topic or jump ahead, there is a full list of time codes in the video description if you click through to YouTube.

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Is there another motherhood topic you'd like to see discussed in-depth? Let me know in the comments!