Laura: Most people think of infertility as a failure of nature. A glitch in the system. Sophia: Right, like your body didn't get the memo on its primary biological function. It’s seen as a problem to be fixed. Laura: Exactly. But what if, in some species, infertility is actually a feature, not a bug? A crucial component for the entire community's survival. Sophia: Hold on. Infertility as a good thing? That sounds completely backward. Laura: It’s a wild idea, and it’s the kind of provocative question at the heart of Belle Boggs's incredible book, The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood. Sophia: And Boggs isn't just an observer here, right? This book came directly from her own grueling, multi-year journey with infertility and IVF, which is probably why it feels so raw and honest. Laura: Precisely. It was widely acclaimed, even longlisted for a PEN award for the Art of the Essay, because it blends that deeply personal pain with this expansive, curious look at everything from zoo animals to the history of reproductive medicine. It’s a book born from a profound and difficult struggle. Sophia: So it’s not just a memoir of one person’s pain, it’s an investigation into the very idea of waiting. I’m intrigued. Where does she even begin? Laura: She begins somewhere totally unexpected. In an infertility support group, listening to a woman confess, with raw anger, "I don’t mind babies and children, but I hate pregnant women." And at the very same time, Boggs finds herself obsessed with a pregnant gorilla at the North Carolina Zoo. Sophia: A gorilla? That feels like a huge leap. What’s the connection between a woman’s private anguish and a zoo animal?

Laura: That’s the genius of her framing. The gorilla, named Jamani, was a local celebrity. It was the zoo's first gorilla pregnancy in twenty-two years, and it was being managed with all the tools of human medicine. They confirmed the pregnancy with a drugstore test. Sophia: You’re kidding. They used a Clearblue on a gorilla? Laura: They did! And they monitored her with sonograms, just like a human mother. Meanwhile, the other adult female gorilla in the enclosure, Acacia, was on birth control pills, managed by the zoo as part of a "Species Survival Plan." Sophia: Wow. So the zoo is basically a fertility clinic for gorillas. One is being encouraged to breed, the other is being prevented. It's a completely managed, artificial system. Laura: Exactly. Boggs sees this and has a revelation. We humans think our fertility struggles are this uniquely modern, medicalized, and isolating experience. But we impose the very same reproductive technologies and controls on the animal world. We are all, in a way, captive breeders. It collapses the distance between the "natural" world and our own sterile, clinical anxieties. Sophia: That’s a powerful parallel. It makes the human experience feel less like a personal failure and more like a variation on a biological theme that plays out everywhere. But she doesn't stop with gorillas, does she? She goes somewhere even stranger. Laura: She goes to marmosets. Tiny little monkeys in South America. And their system is fascinatingly brutal. In a marmoset community, only one dominant female reproduces. Sophia: Only one? What happens to the others? Laura: The presence of the pregnant dominant female triggers a neuroendocrine response in the subordinate females that makes them infertile. Their bodies literally shut down their reproductive capacity. And if a subordinate female does manage to give birth, the dominant one might kill the infant. Sophia: That is… dark. How is that a helpful comparison? It sounds like a nightmare. Laura: But here’s the twist Boggs points to. Those infertile females aren't useless. They become essential caretakers for the dominant female's offspring. The entire community relies on their help to raise the young. Without these reproductively suppressed, caretaking females, the group wouldn't survive. Sophia: So their infertility serves a vital social purpose. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature of their society. That completely reframes the idea of a life without biological children. Laura: It does. Boggs then connects this to human history. Think of Virginia Woolf. She was childless and deeply anguished about it for years, often conflating her failure to reproduce with artistic failure. But Boggs poses the question: had Woolf been a mother, would we have Mrs. Dalloway or A Room of One's Own? Sophia: Right. Her "reproductive suppression," in a sense, allowed for a different kind of creation. It’s a challenging thought, because it doesn't erase the pain of wanting a child, but it does suggest that a life can have a profound purpose that isn't tied to parenthood. Laura: It suggests that there are other ways to contribute, to nurture, to create. It’s a measure of peace, she suggests, to see infertility not just as a personal lack, but as a phenomenon with echoes throughout the natural world, sometimes with a paradoxical, hidden purpose. Sophia: That’s a much more complex and, frankly, more interesting way to think about it than just "my body is broken." It’s about finding your place in a larger ecosystem of creation and care. But this philosophical view must have felt very distant when she was in the thick of her own medical journey. Laura: Oh, absolutely. And that’s where the book pivots from the philosophical to the intensely personal. From the world of animals to the world of medicine taking over her own body.

Sophia: You mentioned Boggs went through IVF herself. She describes it as a "takeover," which is such a loaded word. What did she mean by that? Laura: It's a phrase her own doctor used. He told her, "We’ll take over your whole cycle." And the book unpacks the profound reality of that statement. It begins with the arrival of the medication. She describes these huge boxes arriving, marked 'PERISHABLE,' filled with Styrofoam coolers, gel packs, and cartons of drugs like Lupron and Follistim. Sophia: The arsenal. Laura: The arsenal, exactly. Syringes, alcohol swabs, a sharps container for the used needles. She lays it all out on her kitchen table and is just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of it, the clinical invasion of her home. Her body is no longer running on its own schedule. It's being suppressed, stimulated, and controlled by a precise regimen of injections. Sophia: It sounds like your body becomes a project, managed by a team of experts. There’s a loss of autonomy there that must be incredibly disorienting. Laura: Completely. And it creates this psychological shift. Boggs talks to a friend who went through it, and the friend says, "In the beginning I definitely worried about the long term effects of the hormonal drugs on my health, yet as I got further along, I cared less about the consequences on myself." The all-consuming question becomes: Will it work? Sophia: The goal of having a child becomes so paramount that you start to see your own body as just a vehicle for the treatment. Your health becomes secondary to the success of the project. Laura: And Boggs finds a strange comfort in one part of this takeover: the visibility of the lab. She visits the embryology lab and speaks with Dr. Silvia Ramos, who describes the process with such passion. "I create life," Dr. Ramos says, "This is what is magic." Sophia: So she gets to see the process that’s normally completely invisible. Laura: Yes. She sees the oocytes under the microscope, learns how they are fertilized with a tiny needle in a process called ICSI, and watches the embryos develop in their incubators. For Boggs, who has been living in a world of uncertainty and invisible failures, the order and predictability of the lab is deeply appealing. It makes conception, for the first time, seem tangible and real. Sophia: I can see how that would be comforting. It’s taking the messy, mysterious, and for her, failing, biological process and turning it into a clear, observable science. But that visibility is a double-edged sword, isn't it? It also opens the door to all sorts of ethical and political debates. Laura: A huge one. Boggs touches on the "personhood" debate. The fact that you can see an eight-cell embryo on a screen makes it a political object. She quotes Newt Gingrich, who said, "If you have in vitro fertilization you are creating life; therefore we should look seriously at what should the rules be." The very visibility that brings comfort to the patient fuels political firestorms. Sophia: And it creates this whole other layer of waiting, doesn't it? The "Two-Week Wait" after an embryo transfer. Boggs describes this period as being filled with so much anxiety and hope. Laura: It’s an infamous period in the infertility world. And she connects it to the rise of online communities. Women on message boards with screen names like 'Tryn2BMommy' share every detail. They create these little digital signatures, called tickers, that track their cycles, their treatment dates, their pregnancy status. Sophia: It’s another way of making the invisible visible. Of marking time and creating a sense of control and community in a process that feels so out of control and isolating. Laura: Exactly. The takeover is total—it's physical, psychological, social, and even political. It’s an all-encompassing world. But Boggs realizes this world, as intense as it is, is still just one path. And that leads her to explore the other paths people take when the biological one is closed.

Sophia: It’s a really important move for the book to make. After being so deep inside the microscopic, biological details of IVF, she zooms out to look at the bigger picture of how families are made. Laura: She does, and she does it through these incredibly moving stories of what she calls "Plan B" families. She challenges the idea that adoption is just a simple, happy alternative for when biology fails. She tells the story of her friends, Nate and Parul Goetz. They had suffered six miscarriages and were feeling completely hopeless. Sophia: I can’t even imagine. Laura: They get this sudden, out-of-the-blue call from an adoption agency. A birth mother in another state, who was on her way to Utah, went into labor prematurely. She had to choose a family from a book of profiles, and she chose them. Sophia: Just like that? From a book? Laura: Just like that. And the reason she gave was this strange, beautiful symmetry. She had six children already, and she read that Parul had had six miscarriages. It felt like fate to her. Nate and Parul had to drop everything, drive to Kentucky, and stay there for three weeks to complete the adoption. Sophia: That’s an incredible story. It has this element of destiny to it. But Boggs doesn't just present these neat, tidy narratives, right? The book is praised for its nuance. Laura: Not at all. She contrasts that story with another couple, Mark and Rachel, who adopt a four-year-old boy, Dejen, from Ethiopia. They were inspired and wanted to create this multicultural family. But their journey is filled with uncertainty. They fly to Addis Ababa, meet Dejen, but then they discover inconsistencies in his birth story. Sophia: What kind of inconsistencies? Laura: The story they were told about his origins doesn't quite add up. They end up hiring an investigator in Ethiopia to try and find the truth. They love their son deeply, but they have to live with this permanent question mark about his past. It’s not a simple, clean resolution. Sophia: That’s so important to show. That adoption isn't just a solution; it's its own complex journey with its own heartaches and ethical tangles. Laura: And Boggs makes a brilliant point about this. She says that IVF and adoption, which are often seen as these radically opposed choices—one hyper-medical, the other social—actually share a deep kinship. Sophia: How so? Laura: Both are incredibly expensive. Both are emotionally draining and filled with uncertainty and bureaucratic hurdles. Both require a huge amount of hope and resilience. And both force you to tell a story about your family's origins that is different from the norm. Whether your child began in a petri dish or in another woman's arms, you have to craft a narrative. Sophia: And she extends this to LGBT couples, who often have to start with a "Plan B" from the very beginning. Laura: Yes, she tells the story of Gabe and Todd, a gay couple navigating the complex world of surrogacy. They're dealing with legal voids, the high cost, and the ethical minefield of international surrogacy, like the programs in Nepal that were using Indian surrogates. It highlights how for so many people, creating a family is an act of deliberate, conscious, and often difficult construction. It’s not something that just happens. Sophia: It really dismantles the idea of a "natural" path to parenthood being the only valid one. The book seems to argue that all these paths, with all their messiness and complexity, are legitimate ways of building a family. Laura: That’s the core of it. Nate Goetz, the adoptive father, says it perfectly in the book. He tells people, "Adoption isn’t the way to build a family. It’s a way." And Boggs shows us that the same is true for IVF, for surrogacy, for every path.

Sophia: So when you pull it all together—the gorillas, the IVF takeover, the adoption stories—what's the one thread that connects everything for you? Laura: I think it's that the 'art of waiting' isn't passive at all. It’s an active, painful, and ultimately transformative struggle to redefine your own story when the expected one—the 'natural' one—doesn't happen. It’s a process of grieving the life you thought you’d have, while simultaneously trying to build a new one. Sophia: And that process forces you to look at the world differently. Laura: Completely. Whether you're looking at a gorilla in a zoo, a cluster of cells in a petri dish, or an adoption file from another country, you're forced to confront what family, nature, and hope really mean. You have to break down your old definitions and build new ones. Sophia: It makes you wonder, in a world with so many ways to form a family, why is the biological path still seen as the default, the gold standard? The book really leaves you questioning that fundamental assumption. Laura: It’s a powerful question. The book ends with this beautiful moment. After Boggs finally has her daughter, a mason working on her house sees the baby and says, "Imagine if there was only one baby in the whole world. Wherever that baby was, we’d put down our things and go see it." Sophia: Wow. Laura: It's this idea that every child is a miracle, regardless of how they arrive. And every child is born not just into a family, but into a community that is waiting to welcome them. Sophia: That’s a beautiful, hopeful place to land after such a difficult journey. It suggests that the waiting, in the end, is worth it because of the connection it brings. Laura: It is. We’d love to hear what you all think. What does the 'art of waiting' mean in your own lives, whether it's for a child, a job, or something else entirely? Find us on our socials and share your thoughts. Sophia: This is Aibrary, signing off.