Infertility Books

Some books I just finished reading...

Book #1 was The Empty Cradle - this book and the book below were both written by women who had gone through infertility themselves.

It was an interesting book to read to find out how far infertility treatments have come in the last 200+ years. It was also interesting to read on how society's views on infertility have changed (even the term used has changed over time from being barren to sterility to infertility). In colonial times, it probably didn't seem as big of an issue since people lived in a much closer community than people do today and several different families may live together. However, as society moved away from this communal society to where the family unit was more of just the married couple and the children, infertility became a bigger issue to couples who couldn't have their own children for whatever reasons. Once society moved away from more of a communal society, that is when women started asking for medical help. Women also started to seek more medical help when they heard of medical advances in the treatment of infertility. And it was usually the women who sought medical help - it was rarely men who did so.

However, even though some views have changed, it is interesting how some views toward having children or staying child-free leave, but come back again over time (or maybe they never left). For example, the view used to be couples who didn't have children were odd and treated in somewhat of a poor manner (especially the women who decided to go for a college education - they were being selfish, etc.), then the view changed to it being o.k. not to have children because the world is overpopulated anyway and feminism and all that, then the view changed back (though may not as strongly) that women who didn't want or have children were odd or if women wanted to go for their career first were deemed selfish. People still have those views today - people will always ask you when you're a couple and you've been married for a while, "how come you don't have kids yet?" or "well, maybe you should have tried sooner rather than trying to start your career first."

The book was also a little depressing and scary. The things that some women used to do (and well, still do today) in order to have a baby is incredible. What women used to go through in the 1800s or early 1900s almost seems like torture compared to what women go through today (which still seems like a lot -I'll mention this a bit more when I talk about the other book ). Some doctors when performing some surgeries wouldn't use anesthesia because it was so new and they didn't know what it would do. I couldn't imagine going through surgery without anesthesia. And when women started going to doctors for help, doctors didn't even consider for a while that men could be the problem and when the doctors did start looking at men, it wasn't in too much detail or they just looked to see if the man had an STD that it may have then given to his wife. It wasn't until relatively recently that doctors even checked men first before they checked women.

Anyway, it was an interesting book.

Now onto Book #2 - The Infertility Survival Handbook. I didn't really read the whole thing. I just read the parts that pertained to me. I read a lot about what questions to ask doctors and what IVF will be like. IVF will consist of a lot of bloodwork and ultrasounds before retrieval(thus, coming in late to work several days a week); shots (just reading about them made me queasy); gaining weight while taking those shots (which means I really do need to exercise and lose some weight before starting the IVF cycle and also means the shots might make me look pregnant - which should be a blast(!)); going under anesthesia when they retrieve the follicles; taking a bit of time off work to recuperate after retrieval; waiting to see if fertilization takes place and to see how healthy the resulting embryos are for transfer; taking time off from work for when they transfer the embryos (and with the transfer, it involves having a full bladder, which is always fun - please note sarcasm); and finally, the dreaded 2 week wait from transfer to the beta HCG test. I will be missing A LOT of work when we go through IVF. It would be nice if I could just take the 2 weeks off from work from retrieval to the beta test, but that probably won't be able to happen. I just don't know how some of you do IVF more than once or at all - you are really brave, strong women! I'm a bit scared to do it, but I hope it will all be worth it in the end.

Even though this book kinda freaked me out about what's going to happen with the IVF cycle (whenever it does happen), it is still really good to know going in what all is involved with it so there are no surprises. I really wish I didn't have to do this - it's frustrating that so many women can get pregnant without medical help and without spending a lot of money, but if this is what has to be done for me to get pregnant and have a baby, then I'll do it. Plus, I feel it will make me appreciate my child(ren) even more so than I would have if I hadn't gone through infertility.