Review: Wishing on Baby Dust by Lydia Winters

Title:		Wishing on Baby Dust
Author:		Lydia Winters
Publisher:		Snowflake Press
Pub. Date:		1/8/2015
Pages:		322

Infertility stinks. No one knows that better than Megan. After six years of insanity-inducing hormone drugs and desperate prayers, all she has to show for her efforts are enough negative pregnancy tests to fill a bassinet. All around her women are accidentally getting pregnant—like her star piano student—while Megan remains hopelessly barren. 

Megan’s never felt so alone. But she’s not the only one struggling.

Christina has just entered the world of infertility, made worse by the fact her husband isn’t ready to be a father. Their marriage, already hanging in the balance, is being torn apart. 

Then there’s Kyra, the mother of a precocious three-year-old. She’s shocked to be struggling with secondary infertility. A baby is priceless, but sometimes Kyra feels like she’s being forced to choose which commandment to keep: stay out of debt, or multiply and replenish the earth. 

When Megan and Christina are assigned as Kyra’s visiting teachers, they all realize that what you see isn’t necessarily what’s beneath the surface. Some secrets aren’t worth the cost of keeping them.

(Summary and cover via Goodreads)

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Infertility is a struggle for many women, and this book tells the story of three of them. Megan desperately wants a child, but she is dealing with the effects of PCOS. Christina put off having a child to get her life just perfect. Now it is, but she can't seem to get the one this she wants. Is this her fault for putting it off? Kyra has one child, but she hasn't been able to have another. When Megan, Christine, and Kyra's worlds collide, they soon find that they are not alone. Sometimes having someone who truly understands you makes all the difference in the world.

I was very interested in this book because it's a very difficult subject for many women. I was so pleased with how everything was handled. This book was able to be sensitive to the subject and women involved without every being patronizing or treating them with kid gloves. There was a lot of hurt for these women and with good reason. Each of them really learned to lean on the others to help them through all their trials. Just the mere fact that they are not alone in their struggles seems to relieve a huge part of the burden. I also liked that this book was able to show the different effects infertility could have on the marriages of these women. They all had to work through different things to make their lives better and be prepared for whatever the future holds.

This book also make me really reflect on how we treat other women. The scene where two of them are in Relief Society feeling the pain of feeling like they didn't fit in with a church that stresses family so much was very real to me. While I have never dealt with infertility, I was single for much longer than most LDS women. There were Sundays when I questioned why I even bothered going because I had nothing in common with any of these women. Now, clearly that wasn't true, but I think we all struggle with things at different times. We need to work to be so understand and supportive to our fellow women. How much better would it have been for these characters to have more people to be able to lean on in good times and bad? This book provides a very realistic view of things as well. There are good things that happen as well as bad. Not everyone gets that fairy tale ending. However, every is much better off in the end then they were at the beginning. This was a lovely tale that warmed my heart while managing to break it at some points. It is very moving, and I encourage everyone to take a chance to read it.

Book provided for review.