Actress and comedienne Constance Marie knows her new baby is a miracle. After struggling with infertility for more than three years, she gave birth to Luna Marie, a beautiful baby girl, in February 2009. Marie says she couldn't imagine loving Luna any more, but every time she smiles, coos, giggles and just stares in her mom's eyes, Marie falls more head over heels. Luna also sleeps eight hours a night, and, for reasons that seem to elude Marie, is the happiest being she's ever seen.

"Luna is the best baby you can imagine; she's always happy and has this huge grin," says Marie. "I can't figure it out. She doesn't have a car or a Blackberry, but she's the happiest person I know."

The Long Road to Luna

It was that sense of humor that got Marie through more than three heartbreaking years of infertility. She and her fiancé, Kent Katich, had been trying to conceive for about a year when they realized there was a problem. Marie's doctor started her on Clomid, combining that with intrauterine insemination. She was thrilled to discover she was pregnant, but then miscarried at 6 weeks. She says she'll never forget hearing the bad news.

"We thought everything was fine, and we went in for our 6-week ultrasound only to find the baby had died in utero," says Marie. "Our giddiness turned to sadness, and I ended up having a D&C, but we were determined to keep trying."

Marie did get pregnant again, after six months, and, once again, received the devastating news that the baby did not have a heartbeat. As upset as Marie was, she also had to hide her pain because she was in the midst of an important shoot for The George Lopez Show.

"It was very difficult, but I had to spend a couple of days working, waiting for the weekend when I could finally get the D&C," says Marie. "I had to be funny and laugh while I was crying inside. I just prayed I'd get through it and that I wouldn't miscarry while I was taping. And I didn't feel I could tell anyone because I was afraid of their sympathy, afraid I'd break down."

Shortly after that second miscarriage, Marie and Katich started the process of IVF, knowing that, at 40, the odds weren't in her favor. She remembers the intense emotions of that time, caused by the hormones she was taking to regulate her cycle. The hard part was that she couldn't just hide in an office or her kitchen; she was constantly being filmed and photographed. She jokes that she wore higher heels to spread the weight around.

"In a way, the pressure of work and the comedy were a welcome relief, but it could also be hard to hide the effects of all those drugs, the bloating and the emotions – both from the drugs and just from the stress of the process," says Marie.

She recalls one time when the stress became so intense that she screamed at Katich so loudly that she scared herself. That's when she knew it was getting to her.

It didn't help that the first two rounds of IVF were unsuccessful because the embryo would not attach to the uterus. But then Marie's doctor had a crazy idea – he speculated that the drugs used to regulate Marie's cycle, something that was standard procedure for IVF, was actually interfering with her body's ability to implant the embryos. He suggested that they freeze the embryos for a couple of months, giving her body time to get all those artificial hormones out of her system. They did and it worked, resulting in Luna.

Marie wasn't all that surprised at the results. She'd long been aware that her environment had a big effect on how she felt, so it didn't surprise her that creating the cleanest, most natural environment in her body for the fertilized egg would be the best choice.

Marie didn't just passively lie back and hope IVF would work. While she was trying to conceive she was very proactive about creating the best environment possible for her baby – both inside and outside her body. She did yoga and acupuncture, as much for stress relief as for the evidence that they can help IVF patients achieve pregnancy.

"I knew there were many things that can help in trying to get pregnant and one of the best things you can do is avoid toxins in the environment," says Marie. "Then, when I was pregnant, I figured I was housing that little life and I wanted her to have the cleanest, healthiest environment I could possibly provide."

As she was doing her research, it was a revelation to Marie to learn about the effect of toxic products on humans, especially babies. Everything from clothing, to baby bottles to even the carpeting in the nursery was infused with potentially toxic chemicals. She decided to do something about it – create a completely eco-friendly nursery.

Now her goal is to help educate other moms, not only about the IVF journey, but about creating that pristine environment in which to conceive and raise children. "Infertility treatments are pretty brutal, and the hard thing is that, while you go through it with your significant other, no one knows what it feels like but you," says Marie. "The thing that helped me the most was talking to other women who were going through IVF. It just made me feel so much better to ask questions and share advice. That's why I decided to go public with my story. Unless you've been in this body, you can't understand."