Maria (27) and Ulrich (27)

We took it step-by-step. In our hometown Wechsel, the clocks work a little differently than in the city. We’ve known each other since we were kids. Our childhood friendship grew into love, and on Maria’s 20th birthday, we got married.

We’ve been working on the farm since we were kids. Recently, my father signed the farm over to us, all while judging our decision to switch over to organic farming. From the moment we were married, we were consistently asked when we were planning on finally having children. We denied that we were worried about it. On the surface, we enjoyed our role as a happily married couple working together as organic farmers.

After being married for five years, not only were we annoyed by the constant rumors our families and neighbors were spreading, but we decided that we were finally ready for a child. We took our time, spent lots of wonderful evenings together, and yet we were surprised every month that our efforts “didn’t bring anything”. The surprise turned into frustration, frustration into anger, and finally, the anger turned into a hopeless situation in which we questioned ourselves and wondered why this was happening to us. Our friends, many of whom had met later in life, already had at least one child, and some of them were even pregnant with their second.

Maria’s gynecologist was surprised that she hadn’t come to her sooner. After all, she knew what Maria needed. She had Maria take all kinds of lab tests and I was sent to the urologist for the first time in my life. It sounds a lot worse than it actually was. The doctor completely understood our desire for children and was convinced that we both needed to be examined further. The urologist was the one that discovered why we had been failing: my sperm quality was too poor to conceive a child naturally. Perhaps this was due to contact with farm chemicals when I was younger. That’s when we decided to go to the Wunschbaby Institute in Vienna. I was happy to travel the distance to Vienna, that way nobody from our hometown would recognize us. On the third attempt, it finally worked. To this day, nobody in our hometown knows how our children were conceived. Maybe some people will start getting suspicious because we had a “double lottery” right from the beginning. Maybe someday we’ll tell the others that we were finally able to start our happy family thanks to a little medical assistance.

Karolina and Barbara, born on November 8th.