*Shelby*

We sat in a cream-colored lobby. Decorating each of the walls were life-size pictures of women with swollen bellies or cradling a newborn in their arms. I knew it was meant to be aspirational or perhaps hopeful, but to me, it just felt mocking. I had to sit there in that waiting room surrounded by pictures of all those women who had the one thing that I didn't.

I obviously wasn’t the only woman who felt that way, either. So many other ...