Jonathan Mittiga 10/7/26
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Leigh Snead had the perfect plan: to start a family with her husband after finishing her graduate degree in Philosophy. Her husband Carter’s aspirations were similar—a law degree—and so he agreed to the conventional idea of “three babies and done by thirty.” And, like millions of other motivated modern women, Mrs. Snead’s plan was working perfectly. After five years of marriage, and with the end of their studies in sight, she and her husband were ready to try and conceive.
A cradle Catholic and child of divorce, Mrs. Snead admits that, like so many Catholics today, she was not catechized correctly. She had “never given a thought to what a Catholic marriage or even a Catholic courtship looked like,” before dating her husband. Her husband, Carter, however, had had a “transformative summer” teaching English in Spain through a Catholic nonprofit. Similarly, a cradle Catholic and child of divorce, he returned to school a changed man. Approaching his faith with newfound seriousness, he wanted to continue the traditional lifestyle he had witnessed in Spain, by meeting a faithful Catholic girl and eventually marrying and starting a family. As Snead details in a new book, Infertile but Fruitful (Sophia Press), Carter gave her Pope St. John Paul’s II book, Love and Responsibility, and the two began practicing their faith more seriously.
These days, modern culture sees children and families as inconveniences, to be delayed as long as possible. As Mrs. Snead tells it, she and her husband, armed with wisdom from the 264th Pope, were breaking that mold, outsmarting the secular culture and marrying each other after her college graduation. But they succumbed to what Mrs. Snead describes as a different lie of secular culture, one that prioritizes the accumulation of degrees, promotions, and merit over family formation. With doctoral programs and law degrees in progress, the Sneads decided that they were “too young to start having kids.” So, they waited.
After finals were completed, the couple scheduled a romantic vacation to a tropical resort to celebrate and finally try to conceive. They were perplexed when Leigh did not get pregnant. As the months passed and she was still not pregnant by the age of 27, she became superstitious and obsessive. She tried praying. She tried acupuncture. She tried anger. What she really needed was grace.
These days, modern women are flooded with choice: perhaps more than ever in history. They have a choice in career, who they date, who they marry, when they marry, etc. Mrs. Snead used her agency responsibly. Choosing chastity, monogamy, and a youthful marriage to a good Catholic man. These decisions traditionally serve as buffers from the most infamous interpretation that the word “choice” has come to mean—the termination of unwanted pregnancy.
But our science-oriented secular culture is not satisfied to leave such women untouched. It wants to infect the responsible, chaste, career-driven women like Mrs. Snead, for whom abortion is not an option, as well. So instead of abortion, it gives them IVF. Oftentimes, out of good intentions oriented toward achievement and hard work, such women will wait a little longer than they may otherwise have to pursue pregnancy, and they may find themselves struggling to conceive. Science has now provided the answer; they now have the “choice” to fertilize their eggs in a tube and implant the embryo into the uterus.
Mrs. Snead was offered the same temptation. The couple were eventually convinced to see a local and well-regarded reproductive endocrinologist who had a “high success rate” for getting women pregnant. But doctors are not theologians or philosophers, just like tractor salesmen are not financial advisors—they’re built to provide a service, sometimes regardless of fit.
What Mrs. Snead and her husband eventually learned after months of visits was that this doctor was very good at selling couples on IVF. The doctor didn’t know why she wasn’t becoming pregnant and didn’t try to know why a young, healthy woman with healthy eggs was not becoming pregnant; his only concern was enrolling her in his IVF program. Throughout the harrowing disappointment of trying and failing to become pregnant, Mrs. Snead’s Catholic faith deepened.
Infertile but Fruitful is not a simple polemic against in vitro fertilization; Mrs. Snead does not explain the process in grisly detail. Instead, she uses the concept of IVF to explain what the church teaches: that sex was designed by God to be unitive and procreative. “The child is a gift—not a product of the parent’s wills or the result of their rationally mastering the world of nature,” she explains. Only God is the author of life. The church still loves all children regardless of their conception, and Mrs. Snead does not blame parents who do not know better for choosing IVF. “They’re victims of poor—or non-existent—instruction in the culture of life,” she writes.
Mrs. Snead’s infertility remains an unsolved mystery. Over the course of the infertility journey, she slowly loses hope of ever conceiving her own children. But her thirst for raising children only intensifies. She and her husband continue to try and conceive—baffling a new, Catholic endocrinologist with her continued infertility—and in this process are given an opportunity to adopt. Mrs. Snead and her husband become parents almost overnight, not typical for a usually lengthy adoption process. God works in mysterious ways.
Infertile but Fruitful is a powerful book blending narrative and philosophical insight. Each chapter pairs a stage of Leigh’s infertility journey with a lesson distilled from her lived experience. The book is ultimately about the discovery of a heavy cross and the slow, faithful work of learning how to carry it well.
Mrs. Snead’s suffering does not make her bitter or self-sufficient—she remains a joyful, funny, sensible, and sympathetic narrator. It makes her more dependent on God, and therefore more open to His grace. Infertile but Fruitful tells the story of one couple’s cross and the grace given to them, not to escape it, but to endure it faithfully.
Jonathan Mittiga is a writer from New York.
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