Here are some personal thoughts about infertility: some back story plus a revelation. Feel free to disagree with the revelation (please comment).

For a long time, I didn't even want kids, and I never saw motherhood as an important life goal. I had other things to think about. For example, I have a career that I'm super excited about. I've known since I was 14 years old that that's my passion, and I made a hobby into a profession. It's awesome. Anyway. At some point a Darwinian baby rabies hit me. We're just survival and reproduction machines, and reproducing is the only real life goal, and so on. Plus, family life started to look less horrible than I had thought before. I grew up. I'm not anymore at my intellectual peak (which was around 19), but I'm a much more stable person now. I'm more patient, and I started to feel like I have my act together, and that having a family would be a satisfying thing and a new learning experience. The 10 year relationship with my husband was getting better and better every year. So I finally convinced him that we should start a family. And we started trying. And we didn't make it. (Process still ongoing.)

And since then I've been riding the roller coaster you all know. Sometimes, I'm stressed, and sometimes not.

And then the revelation. This is no more about having a family. It's about much more fundamental success and failure.

Whenever I'm stressed, I'm stressed about having failed as a human, as a daughter, as an adult. And what I want the most is no longer the baby. What I want more is to not be a failure. It’s pure frustration about trying to do something and not succeeding at it. And about other people succeeding at it even though it’s "unfair". And about other people succeeding at it so effortlessly. And about missing out, not getting to have the awesome experience other people get to have. That's why it feels the worst when the people close to me succeed and I fail.

And when I'm not stressed, I feel much more connected to the humankind, and I feel that I’m doing the right thing as a human, and that I'm participating, even though my genes don't live on.

When it has become this fundamentally about success and failure as a human being… I guess it's time to take a break.