Chana Falk founded and runs Keren Ohr, an oasis for couples suffering from infertility

From Normal to a Parallel Universe

I grew up in Manchester, England, where everything about my life was pretty regular — until, when I was seven years old, my father suffered a stroke that the doctors said he wouldn’t survive. Baruch Hashem, today my father is a walking, talking miracle. (He even relearned safrus and wrote sifrei Torah again, but this time with his left hand.) I also saw my mother run the Manchester doula service, which she started after losing a child a few days after birth. Subconsciously, I learned that challenges can also be the catalyst for incredible growth and giving to others.

When we moved to Romema as a young kollel couple, I fit right in. I worked in the mornings; during afternoon seder I’d meet up with friends, where we’d figure out supper menus for two. One by one we started swapping out our wardrobes for looser tops and dresses — or rather, I noticed my friends doing this. When I visited them in the hospital and organized meal trains, I was still fitting into my sheva brachos clothing, and enjoying a nausea-free shanah rishonah. I was confident that it would happen for us in its own time.

Except that it didn’t. Somehow, without noticing, I had moved into a parallel universe where I was the only one interested in topics other than pregnancy, strollers, and sleep training. It was a universe where people started giving pointed looks when I was out on the street, and it was very uncomfortable. After two years of this, we felt like Romema wasn’t the place to be, and we moved to Ramat Beit Shemesh.

My husband was firm about the attitude we’d take going forward. We’d heard couples say, “If only we’d known when it would happen, we’d have spent those years differently.” He was adamant that that wouldn’t be us. We’d do our hishtadlus and daven our hearts out and never stop trying, but at the same time we’d focus on how we could grow from this stage, however hard it would be. There were times when this felt impossible, but we stuck with it and are grateful to look back with no regrets.