“How nice!” they reply with forced enthusiasm, and you can see the wheels turning in their brain, doing mental math

Being stuck between two diametrically opposed worlds, yet not really belonging to either, is a strange and lonely place.

You can’t claim membership in the infertility club, not with your two beautiful, smart, and fiercely loved children. You have been blessed with the incredible gift of motherhood, with all the bleary-eyed nights and sticky kisses that come with it. You spend your days kissing boo-boos and wiping spills, reading stories, and playing make-believe. You cherish the impromptu cards your children color for you, as you kvell over their obviously genius intellect and professional drawing skills. You savor every precious giggle, and your heart soars through each milestone.

Yet you don’t feel like a full-fledged member of the motherhood world. A knife twists in your heart every time someone asks how many kids you have. The knife twists deeper when your own child asks why so many families in the neighborhood have a new baby, yet yours doesn’t. And deeper still when your two young children sit down with a Tehillim they can hardly read, to beg Hashem for a sibling.

At the park, in the supermarket, people see you and ask innocently, “So how old are your kids?”

You wince internally and blurt out quickly, “She’s eight and he’s four.”

Then comes the inevitable follow-up: “So… he’s your youngest?”

You nod and wince again, because you know what’s coming next.

“How nice!” they reply with forced enthusiasm, and you can see the wheels turning in their brain, doing mental math, processing the four-year age gap, and trying to figure out what your problem is.