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The American Fertility Association Blog
Within Reach
February 26, 2008 - Tuesday
Posted by Lisa
As I sit here this morning working and I take the occasional glance out my window at the beautiful blue sky, the buds on the trees beginning to form and the occasional robin sitting on a tree branch, I realize that Spring will be here before we know it. It will be time to turn the clocks ahead and have that extra bit of daylight when the work day is over and who doesn’t love and count down the days for that? Everyone will be outside planting flowers and working in their gardens, planning outdoor picnics and parties, going on hikes, camping, boating and all that goes along with the beautiful weather. It is all just slightly out of our reach but we know it is coming and will be here before we know it.
As I turn back to my computer I realize with all the fun things that come with the warmer weather, it doesn’t change the fact that there are so many of you out there that feel as though something else is just out of your reach. That there is emptiness and a longing for something and that something is starting a family.
I have a support line caller that I hear from at least once a month. She wrote me a beautiful poem about her struggles to have a child. I would like to share some of it with you.
When I woke up this morning to make my cereal and tea,
I felt someone tapping on my shoulder, like they had something for me to see.
When I turned around there was no on there,
Instead I noticed outside my window a beautiful site to bear.There were some sparrows making up their spring nest
In a house I built for them in the fall.
I suddenly felt this warm, familiar feeling come over me--
Maybe I’m going to be ok after all.
I knew right away who the touch was from--
I guess it didn’t take long for my Guardian Angel to come.Sometimes you’ll take the deepest risks
For the ultimate rewards in life,
And sometimes you’ll do it against all odds
Regardless of the possible pains and strife.
Ken, Melinda, Corey, Anne and I have so much more work to do for all of you. We at The AFA are so dedicated to our mission and want to make your journey easier. We want to help you make the best informed decisions possible and to help make your dreams come true. We want to make a difference and help make it possible for you to grasp what you felt was once out of reach. We want to help you fill that nest that you have started to build.
With love always,
Lisa
Categories
Adoption •
Family Building
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A Love Letter from San Francisco
February 13, 2008 - Wednesday
Posted by Corey
Happy Valentine’s Day. I wish all of you love. Love from your partners, from your children, and most especially, from your children to come. Love of self. Love of life.
Valentine’s Day and all that it represents was heavy on my mind last Sunday, at The AFA’s first Family Matters Conference in San Francisco. I didn’t know if I would be writing a love letter today, or my own obituary! But the Conference was a smashing success, far beyond our own expectations. People poured out of their homes and drove into the beautiful national park which is the Presidio.
Truly, our faculty, comprised of compassionate, knowledgeable physicians and attorneys, as well as other reproductive health professionals, changed people’s lives on Sunday.
For me, the seminal moment came at the end of the day. A young couple; beautiful, polished, in fabulous clothing (you know them, right? The kind that you see walking down the street and you just know that they have it all? That couple) came up to me and said that they had been trying to have a baby for two years, and couldn’t. They just couldn’t. They said that they had learned more in that one day at the Presidio than they had in the past two years of trying. And I remembered. Oh that’s right, this is why I do this work. This for me, represents one of the greatest loves of my own life. Love of purpose.
Please know that like the rest of the staff of The AFA—Ken, Melinda, Anne and Lisa, my purpose, our collective purpose, is to support you, in making your fondest dream come true.
Love always,
Corey
Categories
Adoption •
Family Building
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Of Winter in Paris and Freezing Sperm
February 5, 2008 - Tuesday
Posted by Ken
It’s a cold winter’s day in Paris, and I’m talking to an old grade school buddy that I hadn’t seen in 25 years. We were there for an amazing home design show called Maison et Objet. My partner, after 21 years of teaching elementary school (his mother’s occupation) is transitioning careers to become a designer (his dad’s occupation.)
As I’m discussing my work with the AFA, my buddy—we’re both 48—says to me, “you need to talk to me about the whole sperm freezing thing.” Corner café, a delicious croissant, a café créme, and freezing sperm.
Seems my pal is hoping to create a family sometime in the future. So talk we did.
As I thought about my 2+ years with the AFA, I realized that the conversation, barring the location, was not all that unusual.
A workman, coming into my home office for payment on yard work sees the CDC’s ART Success Rates Report and begins to tell me about the time and expense and anxiety and guilt that he and his wife are experiencing in their journey to create family.
After Mass one Sunday, a friend pulls me aside and asks for assurances that “this” happens to other people, too, and that she’s really still fully a woman.
It made me think about the work that we do and the opportunities that the AFA provides for people to ask their questions in a safe place and to hear from the leading experts in fertility and related fields.
Take this coming Sunday. We’re excited about our first ever conference in San Francisco. We’ve done them on the east coast and they are fantastic. I’m sure the west coast version is going to be just as great. We’re taking a fresh approach, with something for everyone, including a full track for the LGBT community. The day is chock full of brilliant presenters discussing everything from infertility to 3rd party reproduction to adoption.
The day ends with wine and cheese and a chance to hear the real story about the environment and fertility. The lovely and talented Brenda Strong, the AFA’s national spokesperson and star of Desperate Housewives, will be keeping everyone in check.
Whether you’re straight or gay, single, partnered or married, younger or older, just considering family building or in the thick of it, we want you to be there.
Call 888-917-3777 to register.
I’m sure there will be more conversations in Paris and in my office and at church, but for this one day, we can have the conversation together, as family. Please join us.
Ken Mosesian
Acting Executive Director
Categories
Adoption •
Family Building •
Fertility •
Frozen Sperm
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Super Tuesday - Are You Voting For Your Family?
February 4, 2008 - Monday
Posted by Stuart
Today, when voters from 24 states go to the polls to select the candidates who will represent the major parties in the next election, I’m thinking about how direct our democracy is. I’m thinking about how I voted by absentee ballot for the people who represent my family’s best interests. Not just the family I have at this moment, but the one I’ll have in three weeks when my son is due to be delivered, and the one I reserve the right to have in the future.
As one-half of a gay couple with our first child ready to be born through the amazing assistance of an egg donor and surrogate, I’m keenly aware of the huge strides we’ve made in legalizing many types of family formation. At the same time, I’m acutely conscious of how all that progress could be taken away with the stroke of a pen or the judgment of a court.
That’s why I know deep in my bones that my vote makes a difference. Yours does too.
I suppose it all came home last week I was at lunch with a friend who told me she was voting for one of the candidates who I think is probably the worst on many of the issues that the AFA stands for. I was a little upset at my friend, the mother of two children via surrogacy, for not factoring in reproductive and family building rights into her candidate selection criteria.
Now while I’m gay, and she’s straight, I realized then and there, this isn’t about the politics of sexual orientation. This is about the threats to the basic human right to have family. This is about the threat to assisted reproductive medicine that could wipe out our choice to freeze embryos and to dispose of unused ones according to our individual moral codes. This is about fending off constant challenges to selective reduction, egg donation, genetic diagnosis, surrogacy and gamete donation. And we’ve got to be alert and educated because sometimes the assaults are obvious and sometimes, as in the Colorado push to confer the legal rights of personhood on a fertilized egg, stealthy. We take many of these rights for granted but each of these has come under attack in the last few years.
When I read the papers, listen carefully to the platforms of various candidates, I do know we’ve got to be grounded enough to vote for those who will stand up for the essential right to create family in the ways that are suitable to us. Not according to the ideological dictates of a given administration. But according to our individual hearts.
Knowing just how fragile our family buiding rights are, I believe that this next election is crucial. The results will have a profound impact on our future and that of succeeding generations. I’m voting with all of that in mind. All I can say is I hope you will too.
Stuart Miller
Co-Chair
American Fertility Association
Categories
Adoption •
Egg Donation •
Family Building •
Surrogacy
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