I was on Sifnos when I found out. In what I can only describe as a “simple twist of fate,” a fellow traveler came up to me and Rahul as we were walking back up the winding stone path that leads down to the Church of the Seven Martyrs, an iconic whitewashed chapel perched on a rugged, windswept cliff that juts into the Aegean Sea.

“This is random,” she said, “but it looked like you two were having a spiritual moment down there as you were walking around the church. I can’t explain it, but I felt it, so I took some photos of you and would love to Airdrop them to you.”

What? Who does that? We were obviously touched, and thanked her profusely for the candids before continuing on our walk into the ancient village of Kastro. Once we arrived, we popped into a seaside taverna, Captain George, for some fried sardines and a carafe of house rosé. I was in the bathroom there when I saw it: the implantation bleeding (an early sign of pregnancy). And my first thought was: “How did that traveler who took our photos know?”

When you’re struggling with infertility, people love to tell you to just relax. “It’ll happen when you stop thinking about it,” or “Just drink a bottle of wine and have fun,” “Maybe you should go on vacation.” For years, I’d told anyone who would listen how triggering those unsolicited comments could be. They made me feel like my infertility was my own fault, not the result of an actual medical disease. So you can imagine my surprise when I did all of the things everyone always says to do, and…It actually worked. Without IVF. Drink a bottle of wine and relax? Check. Go on vacation? Check again. Stop thinking about it entirely? Well, almost check. It’s hard to get away from it all when “it all” is largely in your phone, but to the extent that we could, we did. And I was on my way to motherhood.

Until I wasn’t.

About a week after Sifnos, just as ChatGPT was helping me realize I was likely having an early miscarriage in Morocco, our driver pulled over to the side of the road. He’d spotted the goats. Before our road trip, Rahul and I had read about these goats that climb argan trees in pursuit of their favorite fruit, and we’d asked our driver to keep his eyes peeled and stop the car if he saw them. They’re most famously seen on the side of the highway between Essaouira and Marrakech. But despite my previous desire to see the tree-climbing goats, the last thing I wanted to do at that moment was get out of the car. I’d just found out I was having a chemical pregnancy, and all I wanted to do was wallow. I got out anyway, though, if nothing else to get some fresh air. As soon as I did, a Moroccan woman wearing a flowery pink skirt and a dark green scarf came up to me and placed a baby goat right into my arms. This goat was presumably too young to climb trees with the others, but it was not too young to cuddle, and it burrowed into my chest.