Prayers to the Fertility Gods in Copic Markers

I was feeling cautiously optimistic as I sat down at my long wooden kitchen table and pulled out supplies to make a new drawing: a fresh pad of paper and a pencil, an eraser, a bin of colored Sharpies, and another bin of Copic markers, which have paintbrush tips. After a year and a half of trying to get pregnant and not succeeding, Ted and I decided to pursue fertility treatments. I had just done the “ovary stimulation” part of the process, and it worked. Always the overachiever, my body produced not two or six but fifteen eggs, which were still in my body as I sat and started to draw.

I pulled out a dark-green fine-tip Sharpie and drew fifteen little circles.

Fifteen little chances.

Fifteen little opportunities.

Every circle I drew was a tiny meditation.

Please let all the needles and the hormones be worth it.

I drew another circle.

How will it feel to be pregnant?

Another one.

Am I ready to be a mother?

A small cluster formed.

I wonder if it’ll be a boy or a girl.

I put my pen down.

What the fuck am I doing?

With each circle came another question. Another wish. Another dream. And with each tiny bubble that emerged, I felt more certain. I would become a mother. I was on my way.

It was mid-May, and I was making this drawing for an art show called “Side by Side” that I was doing with my old friend and dresser Julien Havard at the Hamilton-Selway gallery in Hollywood. In addition to showing our own individual work, Julien and I were also going to collaborate on several pieces, combining his swirly style with my interconnected-circle approach, a playful take on pointillism. The opening was in June, which meant I had less than five weeks to prepare for it.

It was my sixth show with Julien. In the past, I had done drawings of animals, or flowers, or those girls with flowing hair. I did a series of Broadway character portraits—Violet, Millie, Reno, and Fiona—the year before, in what was my first LA art opening, followed by another exhibition in Provincetown that focused entirely on dogs. Right before my mom died, I’d showed the giant word collages BADASS and YOU ROCK, as well as two others I had done (YOU ARE LOVED and NO FEAR) at a Manhattan gallery.

The work always reflected something personal that was happening in my life at that moment: for this show, I decided to focus on fertility. I wanted to make a series that would allow me to meditate on what was happening at that moment in my body. This felt so much bigger than me. In the past, I was able to work extra hard to make things happen. But at this moment, I felt I had to embrace the concept of higher powers. My relationship with religion had morphed over the years—I had become more spiritual than churchgoing religious, and I wanted to conjure all the deities to help guide me on this particular quest. So I decided to make pictures of fertility gods.

The first one I drew was Atabey, the supreme goddess and Mother Earth figure of the Taíno people indigenous to the Caribbean, who is worshiped as a deity of fertility, childbirth, and fresh water, among other things. One of the most popular images of her depicts her squatting, her belly big between her bent knees, her arms raised, a hand next to each ear. The story goes that she gave birth to her sons without actually having sex. (Going through IUI and all it entails, I related!) I began by filling the page with small, orange-rimmed circles that I colored in with shades of lime green, lemon yellow, pale pink, and sky blue. Over time, the corner started to look as if it had been sprinkled with confetti made up of little jewel-like drops. A celebration. A new life.

Next, I outlined Atabey in a pale lime green. Her body was made up of more interlaced bubbles, but these I filled in dark purple, deep blue, and brick red, with hints of cinnamon brown scattered throughout. My style of drawing worked well for Atabey. The interconnected bubbles that I had used in so many other drawings leading up to this one made it look as if her ovaries were teeming with eggs, like mine were at that very moment.

As I worked my way through the drawing, I thought, Make me fertile. Make me willing to receive.

It felt strange, to suddenly want to become a mother so badly. For most of my life, my career had been my focus. Plus, my mom had made a prediction when I was in my early twenties that now haunted me. “Sutton, you won’t have children,” she said. “Hunter will.” I don’t recall why she said that, only that it stung. Back then, motherhood was the furthest thing from my mind. At the time, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to be a mom. Still, her comment confused me. What did she see in me that made her say such a thing? Maybe I was too career focused and didn’t have the “motherly” gene. As I got older and saw friends starting their families, I began to worry—what if she was right? It all felt beyond my reach.

I know now that I was still finding myself. And that I needed to do that in order to find the right partner, which was important to me in order to start a family. As independent as I was, I didn’t want to do that alone. Funnily enough, Hunter and Jen never had kids. And now that I had found Ted, I was finally ready. When I broached the subject to Ted, he said, “Let’s do it!”

At first, we just stopped using protection. We were both so excited. It was all we could think or talk about. We started talking about baby names and where we’d want to raise our child—New York? Los Angeles? We had just bought a new apartment in Manhattan, as we were spending more time there, and the thought of raising a city kid was appealing. The culture, the experiences! But Ted’s family was in Los Angeles, where life felt easier. We’d have more space! And did I mention the sunshine? We never settled on one or the other. Instead, I let my imagination run wild with all the possibilities—the places we would go together as a family, the blankets I would crochet for our kid. Imagining Ted wearing a Baby Bjorn on weekend hikes made me fall even more in love with him—and I couldn’t wait to start painting murals on the nursery walls! These were new, thrilling thoughts. After so many years of preventing pregnancy, I was suddenly eager to become a mother!

The first time I got my period, I felt like such a failure. I thought it would be so easy! As the months rolled by, however, that feeling—that this was not going according to plan, that something was getting in the way—started to irk me. I continued to be shocked each month it didn’t work. And then I began to wonder: Was my mother’s prediction a premonition? I swatted that idea from my mind. I had a pretty good track record of making things happen through hard work. I was determined.

After a few months of just kind of winging it, I Googled “How to get pregnant at 38” and I learned that I was a “geriatric mother” and that the odds were slim. Like, 29 percent chances. I felt a pit in my stomach, a gnawing. I had heard about age-related fertility, but I thought it was bullshit or, at the very least, that it didn’t pertain to me. Sure, I was thirty-eight, but my grandmother Lenora had my mother at forty-one and my uncle at forty-four. And my Aunt Mary Anne had my cousin Jayme at age forty-five! My friend Stephanie was thirty-nine when she first started trying to get pregnant—she was in LA and I was in New York at the time, but I remembered her telling me about taking her temperature throughout the day and making detailed flow charts. It felt so ridiculous to me then—until I learned that my ovaries were literally shriveling up. I decided to focus all my energy on getting pregnant, like Stephanie had.

I can do this, I thought as I downloaded an ovulation tracker app, made a flow chart, and bought a thermometer. Trying to get pregnant shifted from being a giddy, fun activity to being a crash course on windows of peak fertility. And once I found the hour each month when everything lined up, Ted and I both had to be game—or at least in the same state. That wasn’t so easy when I was filming crazy hours with Younger and traveling for concerts most weekends, and Ted was finalizing a major script.

After another several months of failed attempts, my gynecologist did a few routine tests, which all came back normal. “Just keep trying,” she said. “Give it another six months, and then we can start talking about other options.”

Cut to a year and a half later: I was forty-one in May of 2016, and we decided to finally pursue fertility treatment.

I had some idea of what to expect from Stephanie; that was how she gave birth to Sophia and Orlando. After the flow charts didn’t work, she went through four rounds of IUI (intrauterine insemination, where your eggs are stimulated but not extracted), which is much less invasive than IVF (in vitro fertilization, where they extract your eggs, fertilize them, and then put them in your uterus). At the time, it all sounded so very foreign and sci-fi to me, but I fully respected her choices. When IUI didn’t work, she did a round of IVF, which ended in an ectopic pregnancy. Another round resulted in my godchildren being born. They are proof that IVF works.

Stephanie and I are a lot alike. When we set our mind on something, we make it happen. I knew how harrowing this road was—but I also knew it worked.

One of Ted’s best friends from grade school is a doctor, and he recommended a fertility clinic in Pasadena. We made the appointment and drove out to the clinic, leaving enough time to stop at Pie ’N Burger, one of his favorite dive diners. Ted wanted to take me there because he used to go as a kid with his mom, and he thought that pancakes and eggs would add levity to a daunting day. Ted didn’t really know anything about IVF beyond the fact that we had friends for whom it worked. We excitedly talked about our new adventure between bites of breakfast.

It was so much fun to imagine the kid we would have together. Ted’s mom told me that when Ted was born, he had six fingers and toes on each hand and foot. They were removed when he was a baby, but Ted joked he was a new species of superhuman. I thought, What if our baby has extra digits, too? Ted is six foot four and I’m five foot nine—maybe our kid would be a basketball player! Extra digits could help them really grip the ball! We just kept daydreaming about who we would create together, and how someday we’d bring them back to Pie ’N Burger for pancakes and tell them about the role this place played in their origin story.

At the clinic, we waited in the lobby with the other hopeful couples. The giddiness I had felt at the diner began to dissipate as Ted and I sat in the silent waiting room. No one swapped stories or even made eye contact, despite the obvious fact that we were all there for the same reason. It was eerie. I then spotted the small sign stating that children weren’t allowed in the waiting area, and I realized why: for those of us who did not yet have kids, seeing them, at this tenuous moment, could be too painful. I was now part of this strange club. For someone who had been so ambivalent about having children, I was surprised by what I was willing to do to become a mother.

Considering how vulnerable I was feeling, I expected our doctor to be warm and encouraging. So I was incredibly disappointed to meet this very matter-of-fact, almost blasé middle-aged man who seemed better suited to be a bank teller than a fertility doctor. All I wanted was someone to hold my hand through the whole ordeal, and he was just static. I dubbed him Dr. Personality.

“Let’s take a look at what’s going on in there,” he said.

Next thing I knew, he was using a thingamabob that went up my hoo-ha, and that is as revealing as I’m going to get. I will say the experience deflated all that earlier excitement I was feeling. Buzzkill. As I lay on the table, I had to stay focused on the end goal. If this was what it took to get pregnant, then I was willing to do it. It didn’t help that the doctor was so aloof. He didn’t really talk me through anything or even look at me. He was focused on the computer screen, which was displaying fuzzy, granulated images of—my uterus? Ovaries? I had no idea.

“How are things looking?” I asked, in an attempt to break the excruciating silence.

“You’re forty-one,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the computer screen. “We should do IVF. And genetically test the embryos.”

I was lying on the table, thinking, Slow down, Dr. P! What was he talking about? What were all those tiny dots on a screen? Was he seeing defects?

It was outrageous to me that a male fertility doctor who sees women at their most emotionally fragile states could be so detached and cold. I found the experience crushing.

Back in his office, he explained that my ovaries were still producing eggs, but because of my age, they could have genetic deformities. The only way to know was by retrieving them, inseminating them in a petri dish, and then genetically testing them before putting them back into my body. Ted was sitting next to me, holding my hand. We were both trying to absorb all this information, but I realized, at that very moment, that all the pressure and responsibility of bringing a child into this world fell to me. I was the one who was going to have to take the hormones, to stimulate my eggs, to go through the retrieval process. It felt like too much. I told the doctor that I wanted to start with IUI—at least my eggs would stay in my body for the insemination process. At least I could feel as if I had some control.

He replied, “You’re wasting your time. You should go straight to IVF.”

I wanted to punch him.

Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “I’d like to try IUI first.” In my mind, I was thinking, How dare you tell me what I can or can’t do! This is MY body.

“Ultimately, it’s your choice,” he said reluctantly.

For that process, I would need to take hormones to increase my egg production, and Ted would have to ejaculate into a cup so his sperm could be surgically inserted into me. The doctor used more scientific language, but that was how I interpreted it.

Super sexy, right?

We went home with pills I had to take daily, a bunch of tiny syringes, and a red plastic container for all the used needles. Those fun and thrilling nights of candlelight and lacy lingerie shifted to Ted injecting me in the belly every night for two weeks. This wasn’t exactly how I imagined becoming a mother, but we tried to make it light and funny. Each dose was exciting and hopeful. We were getting one step closer to having a family.

When we went back to the clinic, Dr. Personality did an ultrasound and discovered that I had produced fifteen eggs! I felt oddly proud. We were one step closer. But I paid a high price for being an overachiever: the doctor still suggested we do IVF. If we continued with IUI, he cautioned, we could end up with multiples—not twins but quintuplets or more.

I immediately thought, Octomom! Followed by, Hell no!

We decided to move ahead with the IVF and made the appointment for the retrieval a few days later. In between, I sat down to draw Atabey. I was determined to do everything in my power to make this pregnancy happen, despite my late start—and that included taking hormones and summoning deities. I would prove my mom wrong: I could and would become a mother.

I finished that drawing and then went back to the clinic a couple days later for the retrieval. After being (thankfully) knocked out, I woke up in a curtained-off recovery room, and overheard the nurse delivering results to other patients through the thin material that separated one hopeful mother from another.

“We retrieved eight eggs,” she said to one, who burst into happy tears.

“We were only able to retrieve two eggs,” she said to another.

Silence.

When the nurse opened up my curtain, she was smiling. “We were able to retrieve all fifteen eggs,” she said. “This is good news!”

My heart swelled up. My “geriatric” ovaries were still working!

The fertilization process was that same day. While I was getting the eggs removed, Ted was in his own private room. The doctor then “introduced” his sperm to my eggs in a lab. Hopefully they lit candles and played Barry White.

Now it was a waiting game. Over the next three or four days we would know if the fertilization process had worked. The goal was that the eggs would become embryos and our doctor would select the healthiest one to implant. In the end, eleven were fertilized and four were “top-notch” embryos; they get graded by how they look and how many cells have divided. The doctor said that they looked good but he still wanted them tested for abnormalities. Ted and I were ridiculously happy—it had worked!

Getting pregnant in late May would mean I could film the next season of Younger and be able to hide a swollen stomach. I was also booked to start rehearsals for an off-Broadway run of Sweet Charity at the New Group in October. According to my math, I would be five months pregnant by then, so that might be trickier. But I thought a baby bump might even add a layer to the character: Charity was a dance hall hostess. It could be interesting! I knew it was a stretch, but women work pregnant all the time. And besides, I would have a break after that. I could give birth in January or February and be back on set for season four of Younger if it was picked up again. It was all working out according to my plan.

Until the doctor suggested I take a month’s rest. He said my uterus wasn’t ready to receive the embryo. The hormones I had taken to produce these eggs had wreaked havoc on my uterine lining—it wasn’t in the right shape to sustain implantation. What? No, no, no, no! That was not part of my plan! I couldn’t wait a month. I was supposed to be back in New York to start filming in June. My window was right now.

That same day, Megan texted me a photo of her pregnancy test with the two pink lines.

We had talked about being pregnant at the same time, two giddy best girlfriends. She and Adam had started trying that month, and she got pregnant on her first try.

I had kept her up to date on my own trials and tribulations. She knew that we were getting ready for the implantation—but not the latest news.

“Wanna do this together?” she texted.

I started to cry. I was so happy for her and didn’t wish infertility on anyone, but I was also envious.

“I think we should go ahead with the transfer,” I said to Ted in the car after hearing from the doctor about my unstable uterus.

“Why?” he asked.

“I can’t fly back while I’m filming. If we don’t do it now, we’ll have to wait. Megan is pregnant. We can go through it together. I feel like this is the time.”

Against the doctor’s guidance, we decided to do the transfer. We were just going to transfer one embryo and have the other three genetically tested. We drove to Pasadena at five a.m. on a Saturday at the end of May, and in a dimly lit room, a tiny invisible embryo was implanted inside of me. Dr. P printed an ultrasound photo with the tiniest prick of light. That was our little miracle. We hung it on our refrigerator.

Another waiting—and praying—period.

I used that time to focus on the remaining drawings I wanted to do for the art show with Julien. Drawing Atabey had grounded me, so I thought a few more fertility gods, goddesses, and deities couldn’t hurt.

Next on the list was Kokopelli, a fertility god from the American Southwest. I was thrilled that he was a musical, flute-playing, dancing deity—it felt like a sign. As I drew him, using small circles in eggplant purples and sky blues, I thought about our wedding song, “The Folks Who Live on the Hill”: “Someday we may be adding a wing or two, a thing or two.” I imagined Kokopelli playing the song on his flute, dancing, against a sunset background in shades of bubblegum pink, pale orange, and tangerine, the crest on his head waving in the wind like bendy exclamation points. I also read that he brought good fortune to anyone who would listen to his songs, so my mantra, while I colored in all those tiny, interconnected dots was: “I am listening. Play your song.” With each new drawing, I envisioned a little miracle growing inside of me.

The Manaia was next. I first saw this Māori symbol on a trip that Ted and I took to New Zealand earlier that year. Though different tribes have their own versions of the Manaia, the one we saw was depicted with the head of a bird, the body of a man, and the tail of a fish to represent the balance between sky, earth, and sea. It’s a guardian talisman, a spiritual guide. My mantra for this one was: “Guide me. Keep me centered. Show me the way.”

These drawings helped me see how badly I needed balance and guidance. I was doing this without a role model or teacher. Without a mother figure whom I could trust to show me the way. The universe was trying to tell me something—there was a reason I had waited this long. But there were still obstacles that I needed to remove.

The fourth and final drawing I did for this show was Ganesh, the Hindu deity who looks like a pot-bellied elephant, often shown sitting in the lotus position. Though not directly a fertility god, Ganesh is known as the “remover of obstacles,” and I kept thinking something was getting in the way for me. Obstacles are real and tangible, but they are also emotional. I couldn’t help but think my body was responding to a psychological fear that I would give birth to my mother—that her genes would be passed through me to my child. Or that I would become the mother she was to me. Those thoughts paralyzed me. Ganesh was also the god of new beginnings: I was ready for that.

Please clear the path for me, I thought to myself as I drew Ganesh, a symphony of purples and blues outlined in a brilliant gold. Please let this work.

I decided to do one last drawing—not for the show, but to hang in the “miracle” baby’s room. Loosely modeled on the totem poles made by Indigenous artists in the Pacific Northwest, it shows five animal heads stacked one above the another, each representing someone who has supported me. Not the family I was born into, but the one I created. Stephanie is an elephant, loyal and family focused. I drew her first, as the base, because she was the sturdiest of us all. She also gave me the courage and inspiration to be a mom. Julien was next, and I made him a black cat, as he had two of them, Honey and Sammy. Julien, like Stephanie, is adopted, and has been my constant since we first met. He has seen me at my best and my worst. Whether I’m winning a Tony Award or naked and crying on a dressing room floor, he loved me anyway. Megan is the penguin in the middle. Her nickname is “Menguin” (her middle name is Gwynn), which is fitting, because she loves those sweet waddling creatures (and her grandmother collected figurines of them). We played sisters on Broadway and became them in real life. She represented unconditional love and support in all things. Ted was next, the first man to make me want to be a mom and to help me understand the meaning of family. He is the puppy dog, lovable and loyal, holding me. And I am an owl on the top of the stack, wide-eyed, my wings outstretched, ready to fly.

I framed this picture and put it in our living room, a reminder that I did have a family to offer this child. Someday, I thought, this will be in the baby’s nursery. Hopefully soon.

Right before the art opening, I was scheduled to do a concert with the Boston Pops. Megan was joining me to sing our duet: “Flight,” by Craig Carnelia. It would be my first time seeing her since she had become pregnant. I was anxious to talk to her about all the things she was feeling, and eager to know how her body was changing. My doctor told me to wait a few weeks before taking a pregnancy test to confirm the embryo had taken, but my breasts felt tender, my belly tingly. I couldn’t stand the anticipation. Right before the concert, I took a pregnancy test. Sure enough, a faint second line appeared.

I called Ted, who was back in LA, in tears.

“I think I’m pregnant!” I said.

“What?” he said.

I was shaking and elated and relieved. The gods had answered our prayers!

I sent him a photo of the faint result and knew he received it when I heard him burst out laughing.

“All right!” he said.

That same day, I told Megan, and we both hugged each other hard. We were doing it, together, just as we had hoped and planned. That night, onstage, Megan and I glanced at each other, smiling. Two best friends, both pregnant, standing before a seventy-five-person orchestra. As we sang, “Wish me on my way,” the violins, cellos, and French horns elevated our voices to new heights. We have sung that song together so many times, but this time, it felt different, even more beautiful and inspiring and hopeful. “And I will start to soar!”

This was the new beginning. My prayers were answered.

A few days later, I was flying back to LA for the art show when I felt the tiniest twinge in my gut. A cramp. It could be gas, I thought. But then I also noticed that my boobs were not as tender. Something had shifted, and all the excited anticipation I had felt drained out of my body. Back in LA, I did another pregnancy test. That second line was there but fainter.

Oh no, I thought. This can’t be.

When I finally went to the doctor, he told me that the pregnancy was not viable.

I was heartbroken. Gutted. And mad at myself for not listening to him. He had been right. I should have waited. I was also mad at myself for thinking that I had any control over this, that I was so naïve as to think I could squeeze this major life moment into my work schedule.

The art show was the following week, on June 7. No one except Julien knew what Ted and I had been through. Friends from Los Angeles came to the opening, as did several of the Younger writers, and Darren Star, the show’s creator. He even bought one of my pieces, which should have been thrilling. I put on a brave face and talked to people about my artwork with a forced smile, but inside, I felt so hollow. All the fertility drawings I had made were hanging on the walls, mocking me. Taunting me. “You thought you could just conjure us and make it happen. But it doesn’t work that way. You’ll see.”

I got through that evening (barely) and had to regroup. That was our first attempt—Stephanie had gone through many! She was my cheerleader and reminded me that all hope wasn’t lost: “My first implantation didn’t take, but Sophia and Orlando came from the other embryos that I had from my egg retrieval. You still have three chances!”

I felt encouraged. We would wait a month. I could fly back on a weekend from filming and do another implantation. Everything was going to be okay.

A few days later, I was walking around a Sports Authority with Ted, when I got a call from the nurse, who said, “The embryos we tested all came back abnormal.”

“What?” I said in disbelief. It felt like a fucked-up joke.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

If we wanted to try again, we’d have to start from scratch.

That was when the bottom fell out from beneath my feet.

I was going to start filming Younger later that month, and the season would take me right up to Sweet Charity rehearsals in October. I knew that would be grueling—not just the rehearsals, and learning an entire show, but the eight live performances a week! I didn’t know if I could handle going through IVF at the same time. Fitting in more fertility appointments and egg transfers felt impossible. Plus, I was forty-one, and I knew that I didn’t have much time left. I called Joe, my agent, to say, “I can’t do Sweet Charity! It’s too much.”

He let me rant about all the reasons I had to bow out and then very quietly said, “Um, the entire show is built around you.”

I was Charity Hope Valentine. One of my dream roles. An eternal optimist who just wants to be loved. Cy Coleman wrote the music for this beloved musical, and his estate’s lawyer had specifically requested me to play the role. Leigh Silverman was directing.

I decided to take a breath and regroup. Make a new plan. I felt conflicted. Maybe I should just put my foot down and cancel everything so I could focus completely on getting pregnant. Instead, I had to psych myself up. “I will make this happen” once again became my mantra. “I will become a mother.”

I could sense the gods watching me.

Since Ted and I were heading back to New York, we decided to try a new clinic and doctor. My gynecologist recommended Dr. Janelle Luk, who reportedly was able to get viable eggs using fewer hormones. This was appealing, as I still felt tired and worn out from the first attempt and wasn’t sure I could go through that process again while working. My schedule was even more intense than usual: I had also prearranged a weeklong hiatus from Younger to do a series of concerts in Japan that August.

Meanwhile, I learned that Liza, my character on Younger, was going to have a pregnancy scare this season. So at work I was playing a forty-year-old who had a college-aged child and feared getting pregnant that late in her life. And in real life, I was a forty-one-year-old desperately making up for lost time by praying to any and all gods and doing hormone injections in the hopes of getting pregnant. It was a mindfuck.

That summer, I’d come home exhausted after filming fourteen- to sixteen-hour days and still have to shoot hormones into my belly before bed. I squeezed in doctor appointments on the weekends. Dr. Luk was incredibly warm and relatable—realistic about my age but still optimistic. We felt so easy around her that we started making Star Wars jokes: “Use the force, Luk!”

Since you can’t predict when your eggs will be ready, I had to tell the first assistant directors, who handle the schedule, “On the downlow, I’m not sure when, but I’ll have to take a morning off for egg retrieval.”

I thought the gods were listening when that procedure was set for a Saturday. That morning, Dr. Luk retrieved ten eggs. (Prolific once again!) That afternoon, I had a photo shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine featuring the Younger cast. When I arrived, I told Peter Hermann, my love interest on the show, “They got ten eggs!” He was the only cast member I shared my journey with. I knew that he and his wife, Mariska Hargitay, had their first child via IVF and then adopted their next two children. Peter was thrilled and said, “That is great news!”

Once again, I allowed myself to be hopeful. Maybe, just maybe, this time, it would work.

A few days later, we found out that four eggs were “top-notch” embryos, and a week later, Dr. Luk recommended that we implant two in order to increase our odds. I was hesitant at first. But then I thought, This is how people have families! Stephanie did it—so could I! After the disappointment of the first procedure, Ted and I were also willing to double our chances. The morning of the implantation, a transpo van waited outside the clinic to drive me back to the set to film three scenes. Dr. Luk didn’t know I was heading straight to work—she had advised that I rest afterward, but my crazy work schedule would not allow that. I kept it all a secret and felt hopeful as I sat in the makeup chair, smiling to myself. I could do this.

Five days later, Ted and I boarded a thirteen-hour flight to Japan. I was nervous but Dr. Luk said travel was fine as long as I rested as much as possible. I had four concerts booked with my go-to guys: Michael Rafter on piano, Leo Huppert on bass, and Kevin Kuhn on guitar. The first show was in Osaka, followed by one in Yokohama and the last two in Tokyo. We had done the set many times, so that part was easy, but I was taking hormones daily in a different time zone. Ted and I scaled back our daily excursions so I could save energy for the evening concerts.

During the shows in Osaka and Yokohama, my belly was fluttery and my boobs hurt even more than they had before. I kept flashing Ted, asking, “Do they look different?”

“They look big,” he’d respond. “Maybe a little veiny?”

I took these as good signs.

Our final stop was Tokyo. Japanese audiences generally were not as effusive as American crowds, so I was touched when I got a standing ovation at the end of that show. Afterward, a local theater group showed up backstage dressed as my various characters—Millie, Reno, Fiona, and Violet—and sang the sweetest version of the title song from Thoroughly Modern Millie for me. It was all so moving.

I was also relieved: one show to go.

That next day, Ted and I walked through Harajuku, an area of Tokyo known for its colorful street art and vintage stores. I got a tower of rainbow cotton candy. It was fun, but also such a hot and humid day that Ted sweated through his pants—he looked like he had just taken a shower fully dressed. Back at the hotel, I started to feel a little off. I kept telling myself it was the heat.

That evening, Ted walked me to the theater.

“Have a great show,” he said.

As I was applying my makeup in the dressing room, I felt the strangest sensation. A pointed jab, as if someone had pricked me with a needle in my abdomen, followed by a ripple throughout my body, the slightest deflation. It’s not working, I thought, fighting back tears.

The show was a blur. I was so grateful that I had sung all those songs dozens of times before, and that I knew how to sing through painful emotions, because the only thing on my mind was that something was preventing me from getting pregnant.

Back at the hotel, I was distraught. I did the at-home test I had brought with me in the bathroom, even though I already knew what the results would be. Ted waited in the living room of our suite. When I exited the bathroom, I just shook my head.

He hugged me, but I didn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. I was numb.

That night, we went to have dinner at the hotel’s revolving rooftop restaurant.

We were surrounded by panoramic views of Tokyo’s skyline, but I felt claustrophobic. Everything started swirling into a tunnel, similar to the experience I’d had on the Will Rogers tour in Houston all those years ago. Ted was saying something, but I couldn’t hear him. The food arrived, but I couldn’t eat. I was too upset. At my body for failing me. That it took me so long to find Ted and that when I finally did and we wanted to start a family, we couldn’t. That I couldn’t. I thought something was wrong with me. Maybe my mother was right. I was still angry that it wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be. The maelstrom of emotions made me want to hurl myself out the window into the neon, blinking cityscape. I wanted to just disappear.

“Are you okay?” Ted asked.

Instead of answering, I left the table and made my way back to our room. I could feel all these feelings whirling within me and funneling up toward my chest. As soon as I opened the door, I began to wail. Was my body not cooperating for a reason? Was I that scared to become a mother because I thought I would become my mother? All the hope, all those dreams, all my insistence that I could do this came crashing down as I collapsed on the bed in a flood of tears.

Ted arrived moments later and found me sobbing into a pillow. I didn’t even look up at him. I just wailed, curled up in the fetal position, “I hate this! Why is it all on me? All you have to do is jerk off in a cup. It all falls on the woman!”

I was ranting and sobbing, and I felt the pressure of Younger as well as Sweet Charity looming on the horizon.

“I can’t do this alone. It can’t just be on me!”

The tears were a truth serum. That lingering feeling that I had kept at bay was now on full display: I was not getting pregnant. This was not working.

“We have to explore other options,” I said, still crying. “We have to pursue adoption.”

Ted was rubbing my back, his big strong hands soothing me. “Okay,” he said. No sigh. No pushback. “Let’s do it.”

We had talked about it as a possibility, but he had been hesitant. His mom had an adopted sister, and that was a complicated relationship. And he had another friend who had a difficult time with his adoption. I understood why he was tentative. Meanwhile, my two best friends—Stephanie and Julien—were adopted. They were two of the four people in my totem pole–inspired drawing. The one drawing I did not include in the show. The one I planned to keep for my miracle baby.

“I’ll do one more round of IVF, but you have to call Peter Hermann!” I said. “Talk to him!”

Peter and I had spoken briefly about adoption as a possibility. He offered to talk to us about their experience if we needed it. At that moment, we did. My body was telling me something profound. It was not cooperating. I had to think of different ways to remove the obstacles that were preventing me from becoming a mother.

That same night, Ted called Peter, and they had a long conversation. Peter gave Ted the name and number of an adoption lawyer.

The next morning, I awoke and the sun was shining. It was a new day. I was exhausted from the crying and the waiting and the failing. But I had a small flicker of hope once again.

Maybe this would work.

Maybe the gods had another plan for me.

Maybe this journey was not so much about removing obstacles as it was about exploring new possibilities.

Maybe this was a new beginning.