What Failing To Conceive Taught Me About My Creative Spark

Maren Montalbano
3 min readJan 2, 2021
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash

I’ve always been a sucker for fairy tales.

Some of my favorite tales begin with the story of a king and queen who are unable to conceive. In their desperation, they turn to magical means to get a child.

(Spoiler alert: never, ever involve the realm of Faerie in your fertility treatments. Side effects for the baby include: uncontrollable shapeshifting during daylight hours, clumsy spinning skills, and narcolepsy.)

It wasn’t until I tried to get pregnant myself that I began to understand the desperation of the king and queen.

While my friends were posting ultrasound pictures and cute baby announcements, I spent several years in a monthly cycle of expectation and disappointment as my body regularly released unfertilized eggs.

Seeing so many people around me rejoice in new parenthood really stung. I genuinely felt happy for my friends but I still struggled to keep a smile on my face as I faced questions at baby showers about my own fertility.

Comparing my journey to theirs made me feel inadequate as a woman.

We went through all the things: blood tests, invasive scans, sperm count, etc. It became clear that having children was not possible for us.

--

--

Maren Montalbano
Maren Montalbano

Written by Maren Montalbano

Mezzo-soprano & business coach for creatives. Singer, dreamer, Ren Faire nerd. You can hear me on 3 GRAMMY-winning albums. https://marenmontalbano.com/links

Responses (2)