What drives us isn't a gap in the market. It's the many stories behind it.

Children were never really a question for my husband and me. We knew we wanted them — that much was settled — and we knew we wanted them later. Who could have guessed how suddenly, and how completely, those plans would change.

A few years before I met my husband, I had appendicitis — severe enough to inflame my entire abdomen. I spent a few days in hospital and then put the whole thing out of my mind. Until the after-effects began: cysts, fallopian tubes stuck together and filling with fluid, pain I could not have imagined, and one laparoscopy after another. Seven operations in all, until my doctor decided that the left fallopian tube at least had to come out. "Never mind," I thought, "I still have the right one. It'll be fine." How wrong I was….

I will never forget the surgeon's face afterwards. She sat down on the edge of the bed and told me I would never conceive naturally. She had checked the right fallopian tube several times; it would not carry an egg to the uterus reliably.

At first I simply went numb. It took a few hours for the words to reach me — just in time to fall apart in front of my husband as he collected me from the outpatient clinic. I would not be able to have children. Not the way other people do, not the way normal couples do.

My husband didn't hesitate for a second: "Then let's start now! We'll manage it!!" What a crazy man he is. If only he had known back then what an undertaking this would become….

And there it was: my first encounter with hope. "If he wants to see this through with me, then surely we'll manage it," I thought. I had no idea yet how often I would lose sight of that hope on the way to our goal, how often I would curse it and declare it dead. But above all, how often it would catch me, comfort me, lift me up and push me on despite every doubt. How essential it would turn out to be to whether we succeeded at all. In the end it was a loyal companion to me. Just like my husband!

Our first appointment at the fertility center was in 2014. I had never been so excited. It felt like an adventure, and I attached every hopeful thought I had to it. When the very first attempt worked straight away, I could hardly believe our luck — which made the fall all the harder when it ended in a miscarriage.

What followed were four and a half years of excitement, happiness, disappointment, grief, fear, despair — and, again and again, hope. I'll spare you the details: we came to a total of 5 ICSI attempts and 11 cryo treatments before we met a specialist abroad who examined me thoroughly once more.

"Your right fallopian tube is the problem. It is calcified and fills with fluid, and that stops the eggs implanting. If we take it out, it will work on the very first try." A very bold claim, I thought — and he would turn out to be right. My anger and disappointment at the doctor who had treated me until then rose beyond measure. How could he have overlooked this?? I had, after all, raised the subject of my right fallopian tube with him two years earlier…. I had the right fallopian tube removed as well, we looked for a new fertility clinic, and we found exactly the right place: Kinderwunsch Valentinshof in Hamburg.

Of all our attempts, only the first had ever "worked." I had already made my peace with the idea that we would have to adopt if we wanted children. And then we met our new doctor, Dr. Dawson, and hope flared up in us like a hot, untameable fire. She was the one!! She would help us! On the very first attempt, and unlike at the old clinic, she called me herself: "You're pregnant!" I couldn't believe it. After all those years…

That pregnancy, too, ended in a miscarriage. And yet I couldn't be sad, because, as I said, hope was burning so brightly by then that it lit up my ordinary days. It works! My body works!! It will surely work again, and next time it will hold…

It did work again, right on the second try. And it held. My son is lying on his tummy as I write this, thoroughly annoyed that he can't move forwards yet. This time too, Dr. Dawson called me personally with the result. On the morning of my first ultrasound I ran into the biologist, Dr. Schepers, on my way to work, and he called out to me from right across the street: "Mrs. Latus, it woooorked!!!" He threw his arms around me and held on sooo tightly. Pure joy! That was the moment I knew we had got everything right. We had found exactly the right clinic with exactly the right doctors.

Yesterday we went back. We wanted our doctors to see what they work for. Neo was welcomed with such warmth and such joy… Nobody except these people — and others who have been through it — really knows what it took to reach this point in our lives, and you could see that on their faces. They truly rejoiced with us!

And this is where you come in. I want to pass on a piece of the hope that gave us so much strength. In the end it took 7 ICSIs and 14 cryos before we reached our goal. If a case as seemingly hopeless as ours could work out, then yours most certainly can. Gather every spark of strength you have and let it catch fire, because I won't lie to you: it takes a wildfire of strength and an inferno of hope to set out on this journey and arrive safely! I want to walk it with you and help where I can. It is my way of showing how grateful I am that two more little people now belong to my small family.