Secondary infertility

I didn't even know this was a thing.  Apparently it is, though.  For the last year or two, most of my energy has been devoted to considering why it is that Ben and I were able to conceive with relative ease when we had Bee and J, but have had such difficulty adding baby number three.

I've devoted a lot of my considerable research skills (if I may so flatter myself) to learning about the topic.  And I've come up with this incredibly useful conclusion:  there are about a million possible combinations of factors, and we don't have anything close to the amount of money it will take to figure out what it is.  We'll do some initial things, and maybe we'll get lucky.

But I'm facing up against the possibility that we may not have any more children, regardless of what I want.  It's a sad thought.  I'm working through it, not to mention fighting the muddled feelings that surge up when I interact with a number of babies and small children in my life who either lack parents entirely or have incapable, negligent, or selfish ones who don't meet the needs of the children in question.

There's no easy answer, and for a woman who grew up in a church that wraps so much of a woman's worth into her child-bearing potential, this is something of a crisis.  But like everything else, Ben and I are slogging through it.  We'll see where we land.