NIAW Photo
When I started infertility treatment at age forty-four, I felt privileged to be sitting in the doctor’s office. I had needed to qualify for the hospital “fertility club” before I was even granted this meeting. I was proud that my FSH and estrogen levels were low enough to begin treatment. When I attended my hospital orientation, I expected a freshman orientation like the one at college. The women would have a chance to bond. We would embark on our baby journey together. At graduation, instead of a diploma, we would all be handed a baby. However, the orientation office looked like a lawyer’s conference room. There was a long, rectangular mahogany table with matching wood chairs, paneled wood walls, and a smiling nurse standing at the end of the table. This was not an introduction to freshman fertility life at the hospital. We were not introduced to each other. Our nurse lecturer wore a lab coat and name tag. We rapidly were immersed in IVF 101. I felt isolated and overwhelmed. I ended up going through five, failed IVF treatments with my own eggs without adequate support and knowledge. Then I turned to donor eggs. Since then I wrote the book Grade A Baby Eggs: An Infertility Memoir about my own infertility experiences so that other women would not feel so alone, and they could read the story of a fellow fertility seeker. Then I started hosting the radio show In Search of Fertility so that I could share important infertility information and have guests recount their own infertility journeys. And right now everyone can band together and be united in solidarity with the join the movement National Infertility Awareness Week!
- http://www.resolve.org/infertility101 (Basic understanding of the disease of infertility.)
- http://www.resolve.org/national-infertility-awareness-week/about.html (About NIAW)
