“Who Does 11 Rounds of IVF? Me, Apparently.”

Mia used to say she’d never do in vitro fertilization. It’s a detail that feels significant now, looking back on the three long years that she and her husband, Chris, have spent trying to conceive. “When we first started trying, I was like, ‘We can try for six months, and then I don’t want to try anymore, because I don’t want to have my first baby after I’m 35,’ ” said Mia. “And then, four months into it, I was like, ‘Hmm. Let’s try a little harder.’ ” Now Mia is 39, and she and Chris have done many, many rounds of IVF.

It’s hard to explain unless you’re in it. It’s not like you go into a fertility clinic imagining you’ll spend years of your life and most—or all—of your savings on various failed treatments, which can include trying medication and the less intense intrauterine insemination process before IVF. You assume whatever thing you are trying this time is going to work—or at least Mia and Chris did. And then each time something doesn’t work, something new seems like it...