Secondary Infertility: When You Can't Have Another Child

July 15, 2010 -- Lauri de Brito first experienced the joy of motherhood when her first daughter was born 11 years ago.

She and her husband wanted to have more children, and they are now the parents of two daughters and a son.

But the six years between her first and second daughters were filled with unimaginable frustration, loss and sadness.

"In those six years, I had about eight miscarriages. The longest my pregnancies went was 11 weeks," she said. She went through multiple cycles of in vitro fertilization, but still couldn't get pregnant.

After egg donation also failed, she eventually used a surrogate, who gave birth to her second daughter and son, now ages 5 and 3.

De Brito is one of many women nationwide who suffer from secondary infertility -- the inability to conceive or have a full-term pregnancy after having had children without trouble before.

The estimates of how many women have secondary infertility varies widely, but somewhere around 30 percent of infertility in women is secondary infertility, according to experts. It can be emotionally devastating for women -- and their partners -- who go through it.

Their frustration with not being able to have more children is often mixed with feelings of guilt, despair and obsession.

"People asked me why I couldn't be happy with the child I have. I wondered the same thing myself. I had this perfect child, and I felt I was ruining the first years of her life. I wondered why I couldn't be happy," said de Brito.

Kristin Peoples, age 42, has been through the same emotional lows as de Brito. She now has two children, who are 15 and 4, and it took her seven years to become pregnant with her second child.

"It felt like failure. It was hard to put your mind around why I was able to do it once and not again," she said.

Guilt and shame are extremely common among women – and men, but to a much lesser extent – who experience secondary infertility.