Our Little Miracle

I was sitting in the acupuncturist's office the other day, looking through a photo album of all the babies his patients have had--mostly birth announcements. I was amazed at how many included language like, "God's special gift," or "Our little miracle." Does Shutterfly write this stuff or something?!

Maybe it's cynical because it hasn't happened for me--at least yet--but I see myself writing something more like, "What was up with that bullshit, right?" I have to believe that there's something wonderfully transformative about the power of parenthood that you forget not only the discomfort of pregnancy and labor, the stress of the early days with late night feeds and explosive diarrhea--but also the tremendous, burning, rip-your-heart-out pain of infertility.

The fact that these people can see it as a miracle at all amazes me. From where I sit now, the miracle is that it doesn't happen. That for the world's overpopulation, the fact that except for aberrations like me, 1/2 the population can do this, often repeatedly, without exerting much effort (in the getting pregnant part, anyway), the series of drugs and precise scientific steps involved in fertility treatment, I still can't get pregnant. Yes, that strikes me as miraculous. But I guess they don't make a greeting card for that.