I have a dear friend, a woman whose intelligence, humor and raw nerve I admire.  But as it happens, we fell out of touch for a few months.  I’d moved four hours away, and we were both busy, blah blah blah.

But she dropped me a line today, just a quick one, and I responded with a chatty message, including the news of my pregnancy and a frank admission that I’d been struggling with depression since our move.

She wrote back immediately and admitted that she’d been having a tough time of it, too.  After trying to conceive a second child for some time, she’d miscarried a few months earlier.

I did the math quickly.  Our children would’ve been the same age.

I’m crushed on her behalf, and I find myself thinking about the unfairness of fertility.  

My unmarried, unemployed, wild child of a cousin just gave birth to her first child - a healthy baby girl. Need I say that hers was not a planned pregnancy?  While everyone - baby daddy, four surprised grandparents - has stepped up and done their best with M.’s decision to retire abruptly from the party circuit in favor of playgroups, it’s still hard to look at her without thinking, “You’re 23!  What are you doing with a baby in your arms?!”

Walk around my low-rent part of Metro DC, and you see a lot of it:  young women barely out of the schoolroom themselves, attempting to raise children.  I assume that some of them are capable parents, but I also see that many of them struggle and their kids suffer for it.

And then there are those I love - women who have done everything right, but don’t have a baby in their arms.  One friend, who’d always assumed she’d have a house full of children, discovered that her odds of conceiving naturally were slim.  During my first pregnancy, she and I drifted apart.  Other women in my life have delivered their first child and said, “Okay.  That’s enough.  Fertility treatments, bed rest, placenta previa?  Thanks.  We’ll get a dog and our kid will have cousins.”

In my 20s, I supported friends as they endured pregnancy scares, even abortions.  But in my 30s, I listen to worries about conception and carrying to term, anxieties about adoption versus Clomid or IVF or some other technological intervention that just might lead to a pregnancy - if it doesn’t send them into bankruptcy first.

Yes, many women over 35 and even over 40 successfully conceive and deliver healthy children.  In fact, most women I know first entered the maternity ward at an Advanced Maternal Age.  And I don’t think there’s any point to rushing into motherhood.  Better ready than not.

But tonight I’m feeling crushed on my friend’s behalf, and on behalf of every woman who longs for pregnancy and childbirth but finds that her body has betrayed her.

Tomorrow I’ll probably be back to ruminating on the indignities and inconveniences of pregnancy.  And yet, at this moment, I am grateful for every extra pound, every extra hair, even the funny pimple on my neck.