By her own description, Sandy Wynia Katz, now 48, comes from a ?family of breeders.? One brother has eight kids; a sister has three. The tally of her grand-nieces and nephews is now past 30.
Sandy, a child advocate employed by the Province of Ontario, vacillated for most of her adult years about whether she wanted kids. At one point she considered co-parenting with a gay friend, but when he moved away from her home base of Toronto, the idea fizzled. ?I never really thought about doing that with anyone else.?
That changed when, at 38, Sandy met her husband, Steve. ?I thought, ?If I?m going to have kids, this is the guy to have kids with.?? Steve, who was five years older and had one child from a previous marriage, started off a bit ambivalent to the idea, but Sandy brought him around and the couple began trying for a baby. After four or five months, they had yet to have any luck and decided on a referral to a fertility clinic. In Sandy?s mind, the clinic was just a form of insurance. ?I just thought it was a matter of trying and it would happen, but because of my age I didn?t want to mess around too long.? Read more: 5 reasons you?re not getting pregnant>
With the help of the clinic, Sandy began monitoring her cycles to pinpoint when she was ovulating. Her mornings consisted of pre-dawn clinic stops to have blood taken and an internal ultrasound before heading into work. At some point in the day, she?d get a call from someone at the clinic with an ...