Let's start from the beginning. In Wechsel, time goes by differently than in the city. We've known each other since we were kids. Friendship developed into love and we got married on Maria's 20th birthday. We've both worked on a farm since we were kids, and in time, dad had given us the farm, but kept a close watch on our attempts to advance to biological farming.

Shortly after we married, everybody started urging us to have children. We kept quiet that we had already started trying. On the surface, we were a happy couple of bio-farmers. But after five years of marriage, all the family gossip and neighbors whispering wasn't the only thing getting on our nerves, we wanted to have a child as well.

We made ourselves comfortable, spent relaxing evenings together, and every month we were left wondering how come we couldn’t "make" anything. Wonder became anger, anger became outrage and outrage became an almost intolerable situation in which we only asked ourselves why we weren’t meant to have kids. Some of our couple friends had had a baby in the meantime, some even had two.

Maria's gynecologist was surprised that Maria didn't come to her earlier. The doctor understood our situation and was convinced that we both had to be examined. Maria had to undergo all kinds of tests and for the first time in my life, I went to the urologist. It sounds worse than it is.

The urologist found the problem; my sperm count was too low to conceive naturally. It most likely was because I was exposed to a lot of farm chemicals when I was young. So we decided to go to Vienna to the Wunschbaby Center.

We took the long route so that nobody would recognize us. The third attempt was a success! Back home, nobody knows how our children were born. Perhaps some of them think that we all of a sudden had twins. Over time, we’ll tell them that our family happiness is the result of a little medical help.

Karolina and Barbara, born November 8