Catalogue Baby
As Myriam Steinberg neared her 40th birthday, she felt a profound urgency to start a family, but doing so meant confronting the taboo of being a “single mother by choice” and engaging in what would be a years-long journey to conceive and carry a pregnancy to term.
In addition to taking on the financial responsibility and emotional labor of parenting on her own, she had to navigate a medical system that lacks the proper resources to support a woman’s emotional wellbeing.
One in six pregnancies end in miscarriage, but “no one ever told me this could happen,” Myriam said. Triggering terms like “unexplained infertility” or comments like “he likely won’t survive anyway” contributed to her emotional trauma.
Along with numerous blood tests, injections, medications, and scans, Myriam had recurrent miscarriages, a chemical pregnancy, and a difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy due to chromosomal abnormalities.
She often felt like she was “going in circles of life and death, on repeat without respite,” but after almost 5 years of medical intervention, Abegail and Isaac were born in November of 2018.
This photo project follows the last phase of her fertility story. It celebrates single motherhood while examining the often unspoken emotional rollercoaster of trying to conceive. Being “successful” in starting a family as a single mother doesn’t erase or lessen these losses. In order to address the silence, Myriam has chosen to share her experience through her graphic novel memoir, Catalogue Baby.
