A 36-year-old patient of mine named Ellen came to me to talk about fertility. She'd been married, happily, for eight years. She and her husband had always known they wanted a family but hadn't felt rushed; they wanted to be settled in their lives first. She spent her late twenties going to graduate school and then developing her career. They'd started "trying" a year and a half ago. At first this meant simply having sex a lot; six months later they bought a basal thermometer; a few months after that an ovulation kit, and finally she was here.

The vibrant, healthy woman I'd known for years looked pale and exhausted. She'd always been thin but now looked unhealthily so. Sex had become a chore -- "like folding laundry," she said. When I asked her how she was coping, she told me she was doubting herself in ways she'd thought she was "above"; she felt unfeminine and was furious with herself for not heeding the tick of her biological clock sooner. Late at night, she worried about the seemingly inevitable diagnosis -- infertility. "What's wrong with me?" she wondered constantly.

"Infertile" is a medical label a couple receives after they've been sexually active for 12 months, without contraception, but haven't conceived. I believe in the power of language, and I think this term does more harm than good. By the time a woman or a couple receives this label, they're often highly stressed, wondering whether an event they thought would happen naturally and joyously will happen at all. So I prefer to describe them as "having a hard time conceiving," which is simply a fact, is less emotionally laden, and lends itself to possibilities.