Why I wrote “Cupcakes Everywhere!”

The cover of “Cupcakes Everywhere: One Sweet Tale of Overcoming Infertility”

It is 💯 a trope for authors to say “Write the book you wish you already had” but … here we are. 

A couple years ago, I found myself in search of a book that could tell my ‘rainbow babies’ about their origin story. 

And while I found that there were a lot of fantastic infertility children’s books alluding to the parents waiting for a baby, or longing for a baby for extended periods, there wasn’t one that highlighted the isolation you can experience when it feels like everybody except you has a nice, normal, easy time getting pregnant. 

I wanted to write an honest and relatable book cut through all the noise and get straight to the heart of the matter: infertility is socially isolating, existentially depressing and incredibly stressful, especially when you compare it to the experience of others who make it look like the most natural, simple thing in the world.

But obviously a 3 year-old isn’t going to be into a story about mommy crying in the fertility clinic’s waiting room after a failed cycle while she opens her Instagram and sees yet another celebrity pregnancy announcement. 

So I knew it needed to be age-appropriate with a very simple metaphor. Things that literally make life sweet, and things (most) kids love — CUPCAKES! These cupcakes happened to be everywhere you turned. Except you (and only you) couldn’t have one. And if you wanted one, you had to put up with countless doctor visits, lots of waiting, boneheaded comments from other people… all of it.

I wanted to have a conversation that kids could relate to, and maybe even help them flex their “empathy muscle” to consider how something like that might feel. 

I wanted them to know that, in the end, they were worth every tear, poked vein, gross medication and devastating phone call that prefaced their entrance into the world. 

I wanted every parent reading the book to see their painful, emotionally taxing experience reflected on the page.

And I wanted every kid to know how much they were — and still are — loved through it all.

As all of this was going on in my head, I was reading to the kids night after night, sometimes multiple books per night, and so suffice it to say that I was becoming very well-versed in early reader children’s titles. The cadence, the repetition, the length, word choices, concepts, illustration styles. I’m an editor and content writer in my day job, so picking up a particular “style” is something I have gotten decently good at over the past 20+ years. So I figured, “Why not try to write the one I wish I had?”

Fast forward three years, and a book that took me 20 minutes to write is finally (FINALLY!) almost here. Publishing a book is not for the faint of heart, but neither is infertility, and if you think about it, neither is life. But you just gotta roll with it, trust the timing of things and just keep going. 

Like all good things in life, it has been so worth the wait, and I am honored to have a place on your family’s bookshelf. 🧡🧡🧡