Karen's Story

Karen is the contributing editor for ADHD. She writes daily at her personal blog, Chez Perky, where she covers not only life with her vroombunctious preschooler, but also triplets.

A five-year veteran of infertility, Karen is the very lucky mother to a vroombunctious preschooler named J, and infant triplets: Sam, Ellie and Abby. While struggling with infertility, Karen and her husband were given the opportunity to take in a wonderful 13 month old boy, J, for “maybe a year, maybe more, maybe forever, we’re not really certain how long, but probably just a year.” Though Karen wasn’t sure how she would ever be able to give up a child after a year, she knew that if she couldn’t give a child a loving home for a year, who would? Four years later, J is still with Karen and is just as much a part of the family as if he had been born into the family. No legal document or biological tie would change that.

While parenting J and working full time, Karen and her husband continued to pursue fertility treatment, in hopes of expanding their family even more. Several years, many tests, 6 IUIs, and about $20K later, Karen found herself pregnant with triplets. Though she had long said that anything over twins was her doctor’s problem, she quickly became attached to the growing little monsters in her belly and she carried them to 33 weeks despite preterm labor starting at 17 weeks and a whole host of other issues. Her triplets spent 24 days in the NICU and are now thriving, mobile, and growing faster than Karen cares to admit.

Karen is now a mother of four, working by day as an IT Security Analyst, blogging by night at Chez Perky, and dreaming of having another child soon (yes, she’s insane).