When my doctor announced those three words, at first, I wasn't sure whose she was talking about. I had been holding my breath for so long, waiting for this pregnancy to be the one that worked, that I wondered if she might be talking about my heart. She wasn't. This was my fourth miscarriage and even after five years of fertility struggles, it still felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest.

Five years, eight egg retrievals, five transfers, one endometriosis diagnosis, twenty-two procedures under anesthesia, two abdominal surgeries, and four miscarriages. I was an Olympic athlete, and the strength and struggle required to compete on the world stage paled in comparison to what I experienced throughout my fertility journey.

I was 35 when I first began to think about growing my family and thought I still had plenty of time. That's the funny thing about time-it feels infinite, until it's not. I learned very early on in my journey that having a baby was not going to be an easy road for me. My husband and I originally planned on freezing embryos, so that we could continue to build our careers and have a baby when we felt more "ready." When the first retrieval failed, we officially embarked on a half decade pursuit to bring a baby into this world, and we were not "ready" for what would happen next.

I was accustomed to hard things. I knew what it was like to fall and get back up. To lose a competition and get back in the arena again. To hit rock bottom and wake up early the next day to start training again. I had always prided myself on my resilience and my resolve to succeed. In the face of adversity, I had always committed to positive thinking as my road to success. Yet, with each unsuccessful retrieval, failed transfer, and pregnancy loss, "looking on the bright side" became impossible. There is nothing more painful, more heartbreaking, or more tortuous than wanting to grow your family and being told you can't, especially by your own body. For the first time in my life, my body felt like it was revolting against me. My body had always worked for me, until it didn't. And while I continued to show up to work every day under the bright lights, with an ear-to-ear smile that I've been perfecting since I was 13, behind the scenes, with every miscarriage I endured, I sank lower and lower into a sense of hopelessness.