The Seated View

April 23-29 is National Infertility Awareness Week in the US and today, my sister Janne tells her story of infertility, treatment, and two amazing miracle babies. Many of you have followed the Tinks from they were born , but you may not know that they came to be because of infertility treatment.  The Tinks at 2 weeks   When did you first learn that you might have fertility problems and how did that make you feel about your future? A gynecologist diagnosed me with PCOS ( polycystic ovarian syndrome ) when I was around 15 or 16 and explained that due to a hormonal imbalance I didn't ovulate regularly, hence my very irregular periods. He prescribed birthcontrol pills to regulate my periods. I didn't worry too much about what it might mean for my potential future as a mother until I was 19 when my best friend Claire got pregnant. I knew I had always wanted kids some day, but hadn't really thought about the possibility of not being able to until she was preg...

It all started with the cherries. Cherry sauce is required for ris a la mande, the special Danish Christmas dessert. It has a French name, which apparently makes no sense at all in actual French. Every couple of years, we freeze 5 pounds of black Bing cherries in the summer and come November, carry them to my mother’s to make cherry sauce. It’s a long, involved process resulting in the most beautiful concentrated dark cherry sauce dotted with whole cherries. You drizzle that over the ris a la mande and… Heaven in a bowl! My mother insists on using a Danish product to thicken the sauce just a little, and followed the usual procedure this year. No need to look at the instructions on the back of the package, right? I know you can hear the foreshadowing. Turns out the product had changed, becoming much more concentrated. With the result that as the cherry sauce was being poured through a sieve, what came out on the other end of the sieve was a jellied cherry-sicle....