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The American Fertility Association Blog
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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The Last Miracle
November 20, 2007 - Tuesday
Posted by Pamela
There seems to be a feeling among people who are going through infertility that everybody else got the last miracle. I can’t begin to count the number of times I have had “success story"conversations with friends and acquaintances. They go something that like this, “Did you hear? Rebecca who is 93 and in menopause? Yes, the Rebecca whose husband has no sperm.....Well, she conceived all by herself last month after completing seven IVF attempts.”
The conversation always ends with someone saying “Oh great, she got the last miracle”. It sometimes seems that instead of feeling good for the other guy, we count their good fortune as an indicator of doom for ourselves. If it happened to them, it can’t possibly happen to me.
I have pretended that I am above such base feelings. But I, too, have felt that sinking feeling that the other guy won that round. I remember when I was trying to conceive my second son...I felt that since I had already been successful in my attempts to conceive Tyler through IVF...that I was somehow competing with my own good fortune.
Sometimes it felt to me as though I had the ultimate chutzpah… “Hey God! Remember me? Miracle 30,278 on October 18, 1988? Yeah,that’s me. Well, can I have another one?”
My husband said to me...during that time...that we were like the woman who is working by the ocean with her son and a great wave sweeps her son away. She pleads with God, telling Him that she is a good woman who has always done her best, prayed and done good works. How could God do this to her? After much pleading, a great wave sweeps back and deposits her son back in front of her. The woman looks up at the sky and grumbles “He had a hat.”
When I did my second IVF attempt to try and have a second child… I was torn between knowing deep in my heart that it could really work, and knowing deep in my heart that it could never happen again. I had forgotten how difficult the entire process was; how badly the drugs could make you feel, the intensity of emotions, and how frightening it could feel to climb onto an operating table of your own feel will.
After all, this was “voluntary.” When, the pregnancy results came back negative, I was both surprised and not surprised at all. But I just knew I had to continue if I was going to give this a fair shake.
I was very lucky to have been able to produce enough eggs to create embryos for an additional cryopreservation cycle.
I must admit that it was the knowledge of this additional chance at getting pregnant that kept me sane. I would not have to go through the entire process again. This time there would be no injections and drug induced mood swings. I came in for four or five blood tests and scans to monitor my natural cycle, and when my body showed it was ready to ovulate naturally, the embryos were put inside me.
I remember thinking that this could not possibly work. First of all, there was not enough suffering involved. It was simply too easy.
If you have gone through an IVF attempt, you can understand what I mean. The only thing that was the same, was the waiting time.
The waiting was filled with exactly the same anxiety, fantasies (both positive and negative), and premature grieving.
I spent the day of the pregnancy test working busily on an upcoming Fertility Symposium. Back in those days...I was a volunteer...and a full time grade school teacher.
I took the day off from teaching because I was frightened of killing some poor unsuspecting kindergartner. When the call came, bearing a positive pregnancy test, the only thought that kept going through my head, was I had thought I had used up all my miracles.
I guess G-d had not been counting. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I should share my good news with my infertility comrades...because it is often hard to hear of another’s success…
I could almost hear the “Oh great, she got the last miracle” line. But...I remember at the time...when I shared my experiences with my infertility buddies...that I did so that knowing it can happen, if not the first time maybe the next, and maybe...if I shared...it might give someone else hope.
I really believe my success in family building was not an indicator of someone else’s failure, but of their possible future resolution.
I also believe that everybody has their own personal journey, their own medical profiles and personal beliefs that will guide their own miracle of resolution.
Miracles can come in many packages, we just have to be ready to open them. My miracle belonged to me, and in no way replaces your own.
I too, can be a slow learner, but God has shown me there are no “last miracles”.
Categories
Fertility Drugs •
Infertility •
IVF •
Surrogacy
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Whose Story Is This Anyway?
November 13, 2007 - Tuesday
Posted by Stuart
Our industry is engaging in serious conversations around disclosure issues for children born through sperm and egg donation. As the CEO of a surrogacy and egg donation company, I am involved in these conversations almost daily with both professionals and clients.
But, it is also personal as my partner and I are 28 weeks pregnant with our son through the assistance of an egg donor and surrogate.
We have heard every opinion about this issue—most laced with quite a bit of judgment. One close friend who is also the father of three children through surrogacy and egg donation actually “scolded” me for disclosing to our friends and family who the sperm donor is. “You are taking away the child’s right to tell their own story and that is not right,” he said.
But, my parents never asked me if I wanted it disclosed that they had created me with my father’s sperm and my mother’s egg—and, horrors, that they actually had sex to do it! So, whose story is this anyway?
My partner and I are a mixed-race couple. He is African American and I am white—some would say pale! We decided that we wanted our child to be a reflection of both of us so we picked a white donor who has some resemblance to me and used my partner’s sperm. For us, it was an easy decision and one which we are proud of.
We decided to share this with everyone as neither of us believes that it makes one bit of difference in who the “parents” are. Let’s face it, like many people, we needed help in creating our family and we want to make sure that our child understands that he was created with love and thoughtfulness.
As gay men, we endured shame in our own lives and we certainly don’t want our child feeling any shame for how he was created. We want him to know and celebrate his story.
So, are we ruining our child’s life? I sure hope not. But, I am sure there may be a day when he looks at me and says, “You aren’t my real daddy,” and that will break my heart a bit. But, I will look right in his eyes and tell him I love him and that I am his real daddy, and that he is a very lucky young man to have one that loves him as much as I do.
For all of you out there struggling with this issue, I encourage you to stay engaged in the conversation. And, as the Co-Chair of the American Fertility Association, I will promise you that we’ll stay engaged in the conversation with you as well—and do so without judgment.
All the best,
Stuart Miller
Co-Chair
American Fertility Association
Categories
Egg Donation •
Surrogacy
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Dream Catcher Child
October 23, 2007 - Tuesday
Posted by Pamela
I never envisioned myself the mother of boys. When I used to imagine my child, I would picture a little dark haired girl. Sometimes, I would see her in glimpses, holding someone else’s hand. She would have a page-boy hair cut and look a little Asian. I had a long time to imagine and long for this imaginary child.
During the height of my infertility, I used to picture this little child, and tell her why I wanted her so much. I told her what a good mother and father she would have, if she would just be born. I shared my dreams with her. I looked in shop windows at little pink things that I might buy for her. She was my child of hope.
I came across a passage in a novel I was reading recently. It struck an unexpected chord in me, and I was reminded of my “infertility child”. Scottish sisters-in-law who lived in the 1700’s are talking late at night. One is a new mother, with her child at her breast. The new mother was explaining to her sister about how she talked to her baby before the child was born.
“You can talk to a babe, you know. You can tell them anything. You can pour out your soul to them without choosing your words or keeping anything back at all. And that’s a comfort to the soul. I have often wondered if that’s why women are so often sad, once the child is born,” she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. “Ye think of them while ye talk, and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they’re born and they’re different - not the way you thought of them inside, at all. And ye love them of course, and get to know them the way they are… but still there is the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it’s the grievin’ for the child unborn that you feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms.” And she paused and kissed the downy head of her daughter. “Yes, before....it’s all possibility. It might be a son, or a daughter. A plain child, a bonny one. And then it’s born, and all the things it might have been are gone, because now it is. And a daughter is born, and the son that she might have been is dead,” she said quietly. “And the bonny lad at your breast has killed the wee lassie ye thought you carried. And ye weep for what you didn’t know, and that’s gone for good, until you know the child you have, and then at last it’s as though they could never have been other than they are, and you feel naught but joy in them. But until then, you weep easy.”
The child unknown is an issue for many of those struggling with infertility. The child of infertility for you, may be the child you lost through miscarriage or stillbirth. The child you talked to in your heart may be the one you have to say goodbye to before you are able to pursue adoption or third party reproduction. And like me, you might be surprised to find that you did not or might not, give birth to the baby you were talking to for so long.
I sit on my couch, and watch an old family video of my little family when they were younger. I see two beautiful blond haired boys. Not Asian in appearance, but rather Nordic. Tyler the five year old is actually hugging his little brother and shouts “Family Hug Time”. I watch myself in the video, gathering my treasures in my arms.
Treasures that were buried deep and almost lost. I sniff their hair and kiss their eyelids. I can see the look of wonderment on my own much younger face...it is as though I am thanking the heavens for these boys that are are so real and finally here.
I am caught by the thought of that little girl, so different, that child of my infertility dreams. I think of her, as I watch myself in the midst of solid, sturdy arms wrapped tightly around my neck. And I bless her for keeping me company and giving me hope. Her image challenged me to find some inner strength. In my mind’s eye, she asked me to find her. And I did. In two little boys.
Until Tomorrow,
Pamela
Categories
Adoption •
Donor Sperm •
Egg Donation •
Fertility •
Gestational Carrier •
Infertility •
Pregnancy Loss •
Surrogacy
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