The room went quiet when I placed the ultrasound photo on the coffee table. My husband, Aleric, looked at it, then at me, while his mother stood beside the bassinet holding the three-month-old baby he had brought into our Greenwich home only days earlier.

We had been married for five years, and my mother-in-law, Eleanor Sterling, had never allowed me to forget one thing: I had failed to give the family an heir.
At first, her remarks were disguised as concern.

Then they became suggestions.

Eventually, she stopped pretending.

I was thirty-two. My fallopian tubes were clear, my cycle was regular, and every test my doctor had ordered came back normal.

“There is nothing physically wrong with you,” she assured me. “Your chances of conceiving are perfectly good. Try to relax.”

I left the