Another article on ovaries, this time in The Washington Post

March 25, 2010 | By:

What is up with these writers?  Or is it me?  Do people really not know that are ovaries are ticking time bombs?  This article argues that while our ovaries are turning to raisins the rest of our bodies may not be aging because we have a secret plan to maintain our youthful beauty(via botox, liposuction or some other form of “unnatural aging” at least according to the writer of the article)?  Whatever.  I think by now, I hope by now, that most women know that choosing to delay child bearing — while a very valid choice — comes with consequences.  Putting career before marriage (as an internist lectured to me when I was in law school and living with the man who is now my husband of 17+ years) can be a mistake.  Yes it can, a very very painful mistake.

But it also isn’t the end of the world.  I am all for getting into bed and having a big cry when you find out you’re infertile for any reason, but technology has moved us to a point where aging doesn’t matter as much as it once did.  Thanks to egg donation and surrogacy women have options they never had before.  So we can choose to put off child bearing, as long as we are prepared for the possibility that we may not have a genetic link with our child or be able to carry that pregnancy.  Tough call no doubt.  I just find it surprising that suddenly newspapers are onto our ovaries.  Like this was some massive conspiracy and women didn’t know about it?  I guess a lot of women don’t realize just how serious an issue it is and the article did point out just how drastically our fertility drops off at age 30 (I admit I was taken aback by the new statistics quoted) and age 35 . . . but the vast majority of women are not ready to be mothers at 30 or 35 . . . so what are we to do?  Read all these scary articles and rush to freeze our eggs (a technology that I do not believe has gotten to the point where it is a viable option for most women)?  I’m sorry to rant, but I am tired of people acting like science just discovered this!  Egg donation has been around for about 10 years (maybe a little less but not much).  PULEASE give me a break and give women some credit!

I am about to open an egg donation agency and all of my donor candidates are well aware of what happens to their ovaries.  These are “20 something” prospective egg donors that understand they are helping women who are sometimes not even ten years older than the donor is . . . .  and more to the point, ovaries don’t just age out.  Sometimes they never work properly.  So, journalists, let’s move on!

Let’s talk about something else in the world of infertility.  Why don’t you talk about what a devastating disease infertility is and why health insurance doesn’t cover most if any of the costs?  Now there’s a conspiracy for you!

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What do the Academy Awards and the Dixie Chics have to teach us about Infertility?

March 8, 2010 | By:

I have decided that the Dixie Chics have the best infertility anthem ever; the song “So hard”.  Actually that entire album is great when you are down on your child bearing capabilities or waiting for a baby.  I was listening to it this morning at the dog park and I was thinking about the comments Celine Dion got on her story in People Mag, and on an unsolicited series of communications I received from a partner at a law firm I used to work for.  He linked to me in Linked In and proceeded to accuse me of committing all sorts of sins by helping people have babies through IVF and even domestic adoption.   Much as one reader criticized Celine Dion for not adopting internationally, this man accused of me “moral relativism” (whatever that is) and said that IVF was conceited.  Yeah, well, to each his own I guess.  Quite frankly, to all those people on high horses thinking they have done something god like because they rescued a child from an orphanage somewhere like Russia, I ask what about all the children in foster care in this country?  I think The Blind Side (the movie Sandra Bullock won her oscar for last night) is an incredibly eye opening story about what Americans are not seeing in their own country, and how children are suffering here.  And Precious.  OMG.

I mean really, you want to accuse me of moral relativism for going through 7 IVF cycles, 10 miscarriages, and three domestic adoptions (only two of which resulted in permanent placements, and my gorgeous beautiful babies), fine so be it, but don’t give me some holier than thou BS, you want to do good and say you are superior to me, adopt an older child from the foster care system, someone who has been abused or abandoned.  Sandra Bullock thanked all those very wise and strong people who have loved a child that was otherwise left without hope.  Indeed two of the Best Picture nominees, The Blind Side and Precious, would be movies I suggest the people who criticized Celine Dion and the gentleman who accused me of having poor morals, watch and think about.

Do you really think that any single one of us has the right to judge the other?  Especially when it comes to something so intimate like family building.  I don’t believe it’s conceited to want to feel a baby grow inside me.  I don’t believe it’s conceited to want to adopt a newborn, nor do I think the vast majority of birth mothers in the US are “coerced” (as that gentleman alleged) by other people into placing their child for adoption.  They may be economically coerced, they may be coerced by the life they are stuck in, but any birth mother that can make the self sacrificing choice to place her child with another family to give that child a better life (whether in this country or another) is someone truly worthy of being called a hero.  And the international adoption community was until recently (and may still be) rife with black market baby stealing, and ethical issues that the Hague was designed to prevent.  No system of child bearing, family building, whatever you want to call it is better than another.  None of us are morally superior to the other.  None of us.  We all have to walk our own path.

And as the Dixie Chics understand very well, for most of us infertile people, that path is So hard.

So do me a favor.  Lay off Celine Dion for trying to have another baby through IVF.  Lay off me for trying to help people have children however they choose to do so.  My goal is to build families and to return the gifts that have been given to me by Dr. Chung (a gift to his patients and reproductive science), all the amazing people at Cornell (M. and L., Dr. Rosenwaks and Dr. Spandorfer), my husband, my children’s birth parents, just to name a few of the people who have blessed me.

And know this, my office, my practice, my agency, are and will always hopefully be a safe haven for my clients.  I promise never to judge you.  I promise to help you achieve your dreams (even if that means working with another agency, lawyer, whatever) . . . I am paying my blessings forward (as another great movie would say).  Moral relativism or not.

And what the hell is moral relativism anyway?

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Inspiration Lost and Found, a clean slate finally?

February 22, 2010 | By:

I have to admit that the last six months of my life have been profoundly challenging. The economy hit my family hard, Danielle (my right arm in the office) went on a leave of absence, all my interns left after taking the bar exam, a new friend and colleague was diagnosed with cancer, my mother has been very ill just at a time when we have become adult friends, my husband’s latest contract ended and we were once again worried about mortgage payments, my mother-in-law passed away suddenly, my back was really, really bad, and I was the victim of credit card or banking fraud . . . and out of all of this I lost my mojo.  I just couldn’t find a reason to write, a reason to work, all of my inspiration to go into the office was gone.  I woke up every morning feeling like I was climbing an enormous mountain just to get through the day.  It wasn’t depression.  I kind of just gave up.  All I wanted to do was knit.

Here I was on the brink of starting an egg donation agency (which has been my dream for years), and my law practice was surviving through an economic depression.  And I didn’t care.  I cared about my kids, my husband, my knitting . . . but work, my career . . . gone.  I even kind of gave up on having another baby.  And that you must know is a bad, bad sign.

I usually spend every morning meditating, reading spiritual books, or knitting (a form of meditation for me).  That time was instead spent staring out the window wondering what to do with my life.  Or more accurately, questioning what am I doing with my life?

One day recently, I did an exercise in one of my books.  The book was on the law of attraction and I do believe that our thoughts create our reality to an extent (I do not believe our thoughts give us cancer or infertility).  This exercise was about focusing on what I needed to do in the moment (in order to help me get something accomplished during my day).  In one column I listed the two or three things I really needed or wanted to accomplish that day, in the other column I wrote down everything I wanted someone else to help me with (if anyone reading is interested, I’ll give you more information on the book and the exercise at the end of this post).  I did this exercise for a few days because I felt it was very effective at helping me focus my energy every day.  But much to my surprise, the stuff in the other column — the stuff that I was asking “someone else” to help me with — started to get done.  The first mock-ups of the website for the egg donation agency came in when I had asked “someone else” to help me encourage the web designer to finish the site.  I started hearing from people that I had been meaning to call when I had asked “someone else” to help me re-establish contact with them.  I got emails about seminars on subjects that I had asked “someone else” to help me find information about so that I could learn more.  These may seem like really subtle and coincidental, not very meaningful events.  But it wasn’t so much the thing that happened, but the number of things that happened on that list of things I wanted “someone else” to help me with.  I don’t know how or why, but it jazzed me up.  Maybe I felt less alone in the business world (being a small business owner in the middle of an economic depression can suck), maybe I felt like things were just finally falling into place.  I don’t really know how or why but finally my mojo started to percolate, and then simmer.  Now we’re almost at a rolling boil!

So today, I am off to call someone about marketing the egg donation agency.  I hope to find time to work on my eBook on egg donation, I have some client work to do . . . it’s very cool how something as small as making a very focused list and assuming (even if it’s just for purposes of the exercise) that there is someone there who can help you.  Now if someone could just find way to squeeze an extra hour or two into my day!!

In case you’re interested, the book is The Amazing Power of Deliberate Intent by Esther and Jerry Hicks

and the exercise is called Turning it Over to the Manager (Chapter 41).

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