I was expelled from the fertility sorority.  I had proven everyone wrong when I first became a member.  The receptionist at the hospital was skeptical that my follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and estrogen levels would be low enough for me to do IVF with my own eggs.  At age forty-four, she told me that I could be perimenopausal.  But my levels were phenomenal, -6 and 28. I was a middle-aged woman in the body of a twenty year old!  In nine months I expected my baby to pop out.