When you stop trying to get pregnant: ‘I’m not willing to put my body through any more’

Black people who have experienced infertility talk about the difficult decision to end their pursuit of parenthood

A ghost haunted the labor and delivery unit the night my daughter was born.

I remember hearing her guttural wails and begging her to stop screaming. But as the night wore on and the nurses came to check my wrecked vitals, the haze of childbirth and the oxytocin-induced euphoria that made me think I was holding my baby faded.