SAVING THE FOURTH GENERATION

A romance novelist and self-help writer reflects on her harrowing experiences with attempting to get pregnant via in vitro fertilization.

Sarkisian Wyatt’s reasons to have a third child at 45 were complicated. She writes that while one likely involved a “final burst of raging female hormones before the entire system dried up,” the other was more practical. She wanted to ensure that her neurotypical daughter would not one day bear the burden of looking after her autistic older brother alone. When natural conception failed, the author found a grocery store job that offered the benefits she needed for IVF treatments using eggs free from the “trauma-laden, anxiety-ridden DNA” she believed had caused so much dysfunction in her own family. Sarkisian Wyatt quickly became pregnant after moving through a gauntlet of medical appointments and interviews with potential egg donors. But by the 12th week, her apparently healthy fetus’ heart stopped beating. Her emotions in disarray and her marriage in slow collapse, she went through the IVF/donor process again and gave birth via C-section to a baby who died days later from what was later deemed to be medical negligence. Sarkisian Wyatt finally became a mother once again at age 51 when, after separating from her husband, she gave birth to a baby girl who, over time, helped her now teenage autistic son heal “in more ways than I could have ever imagined.” Raw, terrifying and tender, this memoir is as much a love letter to the maternal experience as it is a testament to one woman’s determination to chase a dream deep into the realm of obsession.

A gripping account about one woman’s no-holds barred pursuit of motherhood.