Couple’s infertility has made me a better person. Yes, I strongly believe in that.

As I also believe that the world is a gigantic strawberry…  My friends and family would normally say that in reference to my sometimes almost naïve optimism towards life. This is not an unshakable belief, of course, as I have gone through challenges at different times in my life that made me question if the world had not turned into a sour preserve…

So, was infertility one of these challenges that made we question the quality of the fruit I’ve chosen to define what’s good in the world? You bet it was!

It should go without saying that having the opportunity to write about how I feel on my wife’s and mine journey through infertility has given me a lot to think about… As I reflect back on our many attempts for pregnancy and on the impact it had our lives since we decided to start trying to have a kid, I do consider infertility the toughest challenge we had yet to overcome. It has been a difficult road to travel in, when most of the time I felt like driving on a curvy road, dueling cliffs by the sea with a thick fog above us. And I am terrified of heights, so such picture is a particularly bad one for me…

But every challenge offers an opportunity. And my opportunity is to learn from our difficulties and try to become a better person as the result of it. Naïve? Perhaps. Easy to accomplish? Definitely not. But a true feeling nevertheless…

Infertility has been hard on us, for sure, but it has not been unbearable. It has made us suffer in ways we never felt possible, but it also made us grow as a couple and as individuals. It has made us put things in perspective and, in doing so, has made us value what we have versus cry over what we don’t. It has thought us the true meaning of cultivating something, rather than expecting to be given everything effortlessly. Like many couples on the same situation as ours, we have inevitably put the many treatments we went through as the “driving forces” of everything we did, from business to pleasure. We have committed more financial resources than we have the courage to calculate. We have drained our emotional pool more times than we dare to remember.

But I like to think that I have also learned from every pregnancy attempt we did. That I have grown with every tear dropped on our many missteps on this road. That I have become a better person in this process. So I’ve decided to embrace our situation and, rather than fight it, live with it! Since then, my wife and I have taken some time-off to travel, to renovate, to study, to work, to workout, to dance (ok, ok, only my wife did, not me. I have the rhythm and the moves of, well, a strawberry…), to laugh, to party! Has “time-off” helped on the infertility treatment itself? No. But it made me live better!

I think what I want to say is: it has been hard, but not so hard that we could not enjoy our lives. The infertility issues, the potential upcoming treatments and the discussion of options will always be there and we will have to live with it. Some days will be better. Some days will be worse.

So yes, I do believe today that I am a better person than I was in 2006. I have learned to value what I have at the moment I have them. I have learned to feel pain and share my feelings without being afraid of judgment. I have learned to love my wife and our life together, unconditionally. I have also confirmed that the world is indeed a gigantic strawberry, but that strawberries are not perfect… And, in that case, all I have to do is to put some extra work, effort and love and perhaps I could end-up with a fantastic jam!