Infertility Does Not Mean Sterility: How To Embrace Your Femininity Despite A Diagnosis

As a married Catholic who spent decades battling infertility and trying to understand why God never allowed me to have a biological child, this phrase brought me comfort. My journey with infertility involved some of the greatest heartaches I’ve ever known. Yet despite my diagnosis, my life has been far from sterile.

Reflecting on the past twenty-seven years of marriage, I am overcome with gratitude for the fruitfulness of my life thus far, and especially for my four sons, mine through the gift of adoption.

Indeed, over the past twenty-three years, I’ve learned firsthand that a woman’s fruitfulness is not defined by her fertility. I hope and pray that other women navigating fertility journeys do not define themselves by bleak diagnoses, but rather learn to seek out and find peace in the many opportunities for fruitfulness in their daily lives.

Over the past twenty-three years, I’ve learned firsthand that a woman’s fruitfulness is not defined by her fertility.

My husband Carter and I were married shortly after college. As such a young couple, we thought it would be best to delay children until we were a little more settled. I’d get pregnant during the last year of my coursework for my doctorate in the School of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America. I’d give birth right after my last final and then turn my attention to writing my dissertation in between nursing and diapering. When we were finally ready to start a family four years later, however, we realized it wasn’t going to happen easily, if at all, for us. And we realized that we were thinking about it in the wrong way. Babies are gifts to be welcomed, not projects to be planned.

The next several years were incredibly painful. We tried every treatment, homeopathic remedy, and prayer possible. Over the years, we sought care from several medical professionals, growing ever more desperate for a potential solution and some hope. Our Catholic faith prohibited us from seeking artificial means of procreation like IVF, and unfortunately, we suffered mockery and pressure from doctors who did not respect our convictions. Our hearts grew heavier as the years rolled by and, one after another, our friends’ joyful announcements continuously reminded us of that which we wanted above all else, yet which God seemed to be denying us for reasons beyond our understanding.

As two years of trying and failing to conceive became three, depression crept in. The stress of racing the clock, the utter exhaustion, and the sense of loss that we were feeling cast a ceiling of gray clouds over our lives. Above the din of cycle timing, research, conversation, and medical appointments, horrible lies began to make a home in my heart and overwhelm my thoughts:

How could I truly claim my womanhood when my body had failed in its most noble and essential task?

My infertility felt like a personal failure, as though my body had betrayed me.

Thankfully, these lies did not conquer my heart. In my darkest moments and at the most trying times in the process, my Catholic faith was only strengthened. I found immense comfort in trying to resign myself to God’s will for my life, whatever that might be.

Learning to grow from my suffering, rather than letting it define me, ultimately prompted me to seek alternative ways to be fruitful. The result was an abundance of blessings in my life and in the lives of those around me. Though trying to get pregnant could feel all-consuming, I focused on centering my life on faith rather than my fertility. I concentrated on strengthening my marriage and enjoying my many blessings. This shift allowed me to see the ways that my love and attention could benefit my husband, friends, and community.

For us, that shift also opened our hearts to finally hear and listen to the call to adoption. This, in turn, led to the fulfillment of our dreams of parenthood. I always like to make a point when talking about our experience with adoption to remind the reader that not every infertile couple is called to adopt. The former is a medical diagnosis, the latter a vocation. To ask a couple in a season of infertility why they do not “just adopt” a baby is a serious no-no. They know about adoption. An appropriate opportunity to ask about their thoughts on adoption may present itself, but you should always wait for them to bring it up.

After a particularly unpleasant and cantankerous doctor appointment, my husband and I admitted to ourselves and each other that enough was enough. That same week, we started researching our adoption options. We were not done trying to conceive, and we would go on to see other physicians, but we were ready to be parents now. Yesterday. Just six weeks after our initial meeting with an adoption agency, we received the news that we had been selected to adopt a young boy who had just been born. We were overjoyed.

This joy was especially poignant when I successfully induced lactation and could nurse our newborn son. This pivotal moment felt like it healed some of my pain, reminding me that though my body had failed in its efforts to conceive, it was finally cooperating in its role of offering nourishment and comfort to the child I loved, my child. It was, for me, tangible proof that despite my infertility, I could be fruitful and without hesitation live out my innate calling to motherhood through adoption.

Learning to grow from my suffering, rather than letting it define me, ultimately prompted me to seek alternative ways to be fruitful.

Since then, my husband and I have welcomed three additional sons into our family through adoption. Each of them is an encouraging reminder of the fruitfulness of my life, of my marriage. I am humbled and grateful that I get to be mama to these four boys.

Today marks twenty-seven years and four months happily married to the love of my life. My sons are twenty-one, fourteen, fourteen, and three years old and are a source of great pride and joy for Carter and me. I have been blessed to work with incredible colleagues and become involved in the pro-life movement, advocating on behalf of women and their unborn children. And importantly, my lived experience has blessed me with the opportunity to speak truth to other women navigating the throes of infertility, offering them guidance, compassion, and hope that their lives will not be defined or limited by the grief they are experiencing.

Navigating infertility will have its share of sorrows, and I know better than anyone that the grief never truly goes away. Today, it seems like more women are clinically “sterile” than ever. So many grieve their fertility in silence. Many are tempted to believe the lie I once succumbed to, that infertility sentences them to a sterile life.

Nothing could be further from the truth, especially not if more women learn, as I have, to see the fruitfulness possible beyond the cross.

Leigh Fitzpatrick Snead is a fellow with The Catholic Association and the author of Infertile but Fruitful: Finding Fulfillment When You Can’t Conceive, available now from Sophia Institute Press (2026).