An empty lap

by Jill Smolowe

In her late thirties, journalist Jill Smolowe was realizing the life she had always envisioned for herself. Her career at a national magazine was on track. Her husband, Joe, was still her most trusted confidante and best friend. And now that she and Joe had decided finally to have a child, Jill assumed the pregnancy that had come so easily to all the women in her family would be her own next chapter. But nature had a different script in mind. Instead of decorating the nursery, Jill was soon racing to appointments with a vial of Joe's sperm in hand: instead of losing her waistline, she was losing her sense of direction, her humor and everything she liked best about herself. As the quest for a child swerved from the roller coaster of infertility procedures toward the baffling maze of adoption options, Jill's desperation deepened - while Joe's resistance to children only hardened. In the fog of depression, disappointments and dead ends, their marriage began to founder. As they set off to