It wasn’t entirely Laura Lippman’s idea to become a mother in her 50s. But when it happened, she leaned in hard.
infertility
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a DNA Testing Kit Revealed a Family Secret Hidden for 54 Years
A personal essay by memoirist Dani Shapiro about discovering, accidentally through DNA testing, that the father she knew was not her biological parent. In the piece she advocates for the rights of children produced through assisted reproduction, after decades in which those of parents and donor prevailed, and children were kept in the dark about […]
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Nonfiction, Story
Dress You Up in My Love
Doree Shafrir reflects on how Halloween changed for her after struggling with infertility.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Making Peace with Selective Reduction
When risks arise in her partner’s pregnancy with triplets, Amber Leventry discovers that letting go of one life doesn’t have to mean losing faith, or love.
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Doctor is a Woman
An excerpt from Sloane Crosley’s new essay collection, Look Alive Out There. Crosley reflects on the experience of freezing her eggs, despite her ambivalence about having children — and as a way of putting off the pressing matter of facing that ambivalence as a woman in her late 30s.
Posted inEditor's Pick
From One Friendship, Lessons on Life, Death, AIDS and Childlessness
In this personal essay, S. Kirk Walsh reflects on her friendship with a gay man battling AIDS — how he taught her to grieve her own infertility, and live life more fully.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction
From One Friendship, Lessons on Life, Death, AIDS, and Childlessness
S. Kirk Walsh reflects on her friendship with a gay man battling AIDS — how he taught her to grieve her own infertility, and live life more fully.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Pregnant, then Ruptured
In this personal essay, Joanna Petrone recalls the medical abortion for an ectopic pregnancy that led to the rupturing of one of her fallopian tubes, followed by emergency surgery. She also reflects on the kinds of legislation that can — and has — kept women from being able to terminate life-threatening pregnancies like hers.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Mother Science
Uterine transplants are frontier science, but they offer hope of possibility for trans women and others seeking parenthood.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Katie O’Reilly on the Downsides to Donating Your Eggs
For a brief while in my late twenties, I toyed with selling my eggs. In the end, I was afraid of having the procedure, of what the fertility drugs might do to me—and the idea of having offspring out in the world whom I might never know. (I was afraid enough of having offspring I […]