My Katrina - One Newlywed's Struggle with Infertility

During the horrific hurricane season of 2005, the feeling I had was not as much hurt for Hurricane Katrina's casualties as it was for myself. It was an emptiness: a result of absence rather than loss. I heard stories of children who had been lost from their parents and I hurt for the families who had been torn apart. At the same time, I envied those parents for having children at all. As I watched the news each night, as the death toll in the Southern United States climbed higher and higher, as I cried into my pillow, thinking about Katrina's fatalities, I was made intensely aware of my own worthlessness. I felt worthless because, up to that point, I thought I was on the brink of achieving my dream come true, when in fact I was on the brink of three more years of painful and endless questioning: "Why me?"

All my life I have wanted to do two things. First, get married. Second, have babies. On August 8, 2003, I checked the first point off my short list. When we got married, Blair and I decided it would be in our favor financially, emotionally, and mentally, to wait a couple years before we got around to having a child. We were both caught off guard when, not long after our first anniversary, I forgot my essential gray envelope of birth control on a vacation. It was a stupid mistake to make, but we didn't think twice about what we thought would be the inevitable consequence. We were thrilled.