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Kate Gosselin Has PCOS and It’s None of Your Business
May 28, 2009 - Thursday
Posted by admin
May 27, 2009
11:30 p.m.
I’ve successfully avoided watching Jon & Kate plus 8 since the series started. Yesterday, I wasn’t so lucky. My daughter Caitlin came home from school dying to watch the show because her middle school – middle school! - was all abuzz about the infidelity angle and she wanted to see what the deal was. So last night, along with about half the population of the United States, I tuned in.
Oy vey. Now I get why I avoided it so stringently for so long.
According to Wikpedia, Kate has pcos, the same diagnosis as me. I didn’t know that. Women with pco are very inclined towards hyperstimulation syndrome and multiple births and since Kate did IUI’s, not IVF, she was way more likely to conceive high order multiples, which she did. Just like me. I talk a lot about my twins in this blog space but the truth is, Connor and Caitlin are not twins. They are surviving triplets. So the high order multiple thing really flips me out. And that’s why I’ve avoided this particular show for so long. Anything that glorifies, and therefore misrepresents multiple birth, truly upsets me.
On top of that I am not a fan of reality TV. I am not a shy person by nature. But this voyeuristic need to see all, and this self focused need to show all, totally baffles me. Why does everyone need to know, and see everything? And most importantly, for crying out loud, what about your kids? No matter what the potential financial gain might be, what you put out there for the world to see, frankly, gets seen by the world! And children are often the collateral damage of their parent’s need to show and tell their whole lives for all the world to see.
So this is where it all lands for me. These very real people, Jon, Kate, and their children, whose names are impossible to find on line, (what does that tell you?) are a family.
These heartbreakingly adorable children were clearly wanted, and their parents worked very hard to conceive them. So please. Remember why you had them, and protect them.
Unfortunately, parents can’t always be trusted to do right by their children. We all know that.
Laws must be put in place, now, that eliminate the possibility that children can be exploited through their participation on reality TV shows.
Life is hard enough. Having your life plastered on a national stage without your consent is no way to grow up, no matter how you were conceived.
Corey Whelan
Program Director
Do Live in California?
To learn more about PCOS and how to control it, along with other steps you can take to prevent infertility, be sure to attend The AFA’s FREE Manicures & Martinis Infertility Prevention Series, which is coming to San Francisco and Laguna Niguel. Enjoy complimentary manicures and martinis and learn about the reality of the biological clock, how STD’s can compromise your fertility, and how certain environmental toxins can jeopardize your ability to conceive a child.
Manicures & Martinis San Francisco
Nova Nail Spa
811 Mission Street in San Francisco
Tuesday, June 9th, 6:00-7:30 PM
RSVP with Vivian: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 646-861-3226
More Details
Manicures & Martinis Laguna Niguel
Accent On Nails
28121 Crown Valley Parkway in Laguna Niguel
Tuesday, June 16th, 6:00-7:30 PM
RSVP with Vivian: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or 646-861-3226
More Details
Categories
Infertility •
IUI •
IVF •
PCOS
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Welcoming Jesse
May 27, 2009 - Wednesday
Posted by admin
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By: Sierra Hansen
When my partner announced 7 years ago she wanted to start a family, I was speechless. We never really talked about getting pregnant because we knew it would require money and effort and we simply weren’t ready to initiate the whole process. She was 37 and I was 31, so it was obvious she would go first. We announced our plans to get pregnant to all of our friends, asked for tons of advice, found a friend willing to be our donor, and tried to get pregnant.
And tried, and tried, and tried. We adopted a laissez faire attitude because like many women our ages, we thought as soon as we decided to get pregnant, it would be a snap. It wasn’t. After 7 years, we used 6 different sperm donors (known and unknown), underwent ~30 IUIs, 18 which were medically assisted with drugs, and finally one IVF procedure which culminated in a happy 9 month old boy.
At first, we were giddy with excitement every time we tried to inseminate, and we held our collective breath for the two weeks between trying and the first pregnancy test. After a year, we began to wonder if we shouldn’t talk to a specialist. We did, and it was eye-opening. We thought we were well-informed and educated about our fertility. Boy, were we wrong. So, we initiated a much more strategic, medically-assisted plan with a great physician who shared the startling truth about reproductive health. He brought up concerns about my partner’s age, and suggested we only try 6 IUI’s before we consider IVF or switching to me. We began to dread the two week wait, especially when our friends were constantly enquiring how the baby-making was coming along. We finally told people that no news was bad news, and most got the hint.
Meanwhile, we watched a number of our straight and gay friends have one and two babies. We rubbed pregnant bellies and babysat as much as possible hoping some good luck would rub off on us. After the 6 IUI’s with our doctor wrapped up the second year of trying, my partner had given up and it was my turn. She tried to keep her chin up, but I knew she was devastated. I did my best to support her, and we turned our hopes to my getting pregnant quickly. We took a few months off to recoup our energy and spirits and started again.
When I started, we didn’t tell anybody except for our closest friends. We just couldn’t handle the monthly barrage of questions, and the seemingly inevitable “No news is bad news” response. Our best friends tried to be supportive, but after 11 cycles of drug-assisted IUI’s, we began to isolate ourselves from them. One day, about 2 months before we knew we would have to make the decision to go forward with IVF or remain childless, we invited our neighbors who were walking by in for a glass of wine. She announced no wine for her because she was expecting, patting her belly to reinforce the announcement. A month earlier they were not even sure they wanted kids and all of a sudden they were pregnant. I wanted to yell at them, slam the door, crumple into a ball and cry. I didn’t. Somehow, I found the courage to invite them in, offer her a glass of water, and toast their good fortune. We did pull back from them, and our close friends, after letting them know we were really struggling with the inability to get pregnant. Our friends understood when we crawled into our shells.
When we initiated the IVF, our physician was incredibly optimistic. The most optimistic he had been in a long time. While my inability to get pregnant via IUI stumped him, he thought I would be a good candidate for IVF success. He was right. After all the shots, pills, ultrasounds, and blood tests, my doctor harvested 21 eggs, fertilized 14, and eventually 5 made it to blastocyst. We froze three, and two were transferred. One took, and when a beautiful 8lb, 6oz baby boy was born 9 months later, we named him Jesse. I had the easiest pregnancy in the world and Jesse is an amazing baby. Today we feel very lucky and grateful that we have a child with big blue eyes who sleeps through the night. However, we try to educate our friends who seek information about getting pregnant at every opportunity. If our experience can help shorten the time it takes another couple, we’ll consider it a bonus.
Best,
Sierra Hansen
To read more about Gay Moms Doing Well Despite Prop 8, click here
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-gregory/gay-moms-doing-well_b_207455.html
Sierra Hansen and her partner, Barbara, have been together for 14 years, and last August she gave birth to a baby boy. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Washington researching on infertility genetics, policy, and law.
Categories
Donor Sperm •
Family Building •
Fertility •
Fertility Drugs •
Frozen Sperm •
Gay and Lesbian Family Building •
IUI •
IVF •
LGBT •
Pregnancy •
Sperm Donation
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Mandated Myths and Newfangled Adoptions
May 26, 2009 - Tuesday
Posted by Lisa
By: Lori Holden
When Rob and I embarked on the journey of adopting a baby a few years ago, everything we “knew” about adoption was from decades past:
- You waited on a long list until the agency matched you with a situation. Top of the list of criteria for the match? Your place in line.
- You tried to make the building of your family as close to “normal” (read: biological) as possible. You didn’t talk much about the adoption, either inside or outside of the family, and you certainly didn’t have any contact with birthparents. The goal was to make it seamless, almost as if adoption were never part of the story.
- As the child grew, you continued not talking about adoption. Surrounding my friends who had been adopted was an air of secrecy. When we did speak of adoption, it was in hushed voices. These friends didn’t know much about their birth families, their birth story, or their origins. And it would hurt their parents too much to wonder too much. So they tried not to.
In the early part of the 21st century, our agency introduced us to this newfangled thing called “open adoption.” Wikipedia (a shared consensus rather than a definitive pronouncement), at the time of this writing, defines open adoption as, an “arrangement allowing for ongoing contact between members of the adoption triad.” It adds, “an adoption is open when the biological mother (and/or father) may make the actual decision on who is chosen to parent their child.”
It may seem, then, like closed adoptions were the “default setting” of the ages. Wikipedia further explains, “all adoptions in the United States were open until the twentieth century. Until the 1930’s, most adoptive parents and biological parents had contact at least during the adoption process.”
Far from being newfangled, it turns out that open adoption had always been the norm, with closed adoptions the aberration. Adoptions became closed when social pressures mandated that families preserve the myth that they were formed biologically.
Rob and I learned all that we could about open adoption. Over the years, we have replaced the myths with these ideas:
- Adoption isn’t about waiting passively in line—it’s about who we are. A couple in an unintended pregnancy would make a conscious decision about us parenting their baby. The criteria for their decision would be our values, our bundle of experiences, and our vision for the future—US!
- Why try to deny that our family was built by adoption? Is my ego so fragile that acknowledging the birth mothers of my children takes away from me? Loving and respecting our children’s birth parents is just another way to love and respect our children.
- Walking a fine line between dwelling on adoption it and denying it, we tell our children (now ages 8 and 6) their adoption stories once in awhile. We encourage them to talk with us about it as their cognitive skills grow. I believe that anything kept in the dark can get moldy, and I want their adoption tales to bask in sunshine.
- There are many more benefits to open adoption. Our children have access to their medical histories and to clans who look like them and love them. Also, our children will not have to go through the potential minefields of search and reunion just to get answers to their wonderings.
In public, Rob sometimes kicks me under the table me as I proudly reveal the way we became a family. After all, he reminds me, I am merely caretaker of my children’s stories. Someday they will choose what to tell and to whom.
But it’s my story, too, and I am so happy about our story I share often and a lot, in an effort to combat myths from a bygone era.
—
http://WeeblesWobblog.blogspot.com ...mindful living amid chaos
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Categories
Adoption •
Family Building
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Riverdale, and Auschwitz
May 21, 2009 - Thursday
Posted by Corey
I am not a great friend. Being a workaholic by nature and loving my job, makes me devote a really ridiculous amount of time to my desk and my humble little computer. But I’m also a sort of lucky person so people tend to hang in there with me, for whatever reason, even if I don’t tend to our friendships nearly as much as they deserve me to.
Anyway. After about a gazillion years of friendship, in conversation with one of my bff’s, Caroline, I found out recently that her mom survived the concentration camps of Europe – twice – by jumping off the transport train. Well actually once her dad pushed her off because she was too afraid to jump. I mean after all, she was only eleven. And then the second time, she did jump, all on her own. Brave girl. Can you imagine jumping off the roof of a speeding train? So Caroline’s mom never went to Auschwitz, instead she lived in the forest, and ate grass, and eventually made it here, and gave birth to my friend.
Caroline’s story kept circling around my brain today because of the thwarted bombing attempt on two synagogues in Riverdale that we found out about in today’s news. This really hit home for me as I hope it did for everyone reading this, because it truly was a close call for us all.
And then, I started thinking about my Aunt Golda. I never met her, because she wasn’t as lucky as Caroline’s mom. My Aunt Golda, I’m named for her, by the way. My Aunt Golda did not survive the Nazis. I have a photo of her that I love. I’ve written everything I know about her on the back of it, in case someone who doesn’t know us comes across it someday.
And this is what I think about sometimes. Who would my cousins have been if Golda had lived? Who was never born, who did I never know? Who did I never love? Who do I miss, in my heart, anyway? Even though we have never met.
And of course, since I am who I am, I started to think about being an infertility patient, which is what I used to be. I started to think about all the babies that never get conceived.
You know what I remember? I truly felt love for my babies, years before I conceived them. I think I started loving them as soon as I allowed myself to want them.
Maybe because I needed to. Maybe that was the strength that I needed to keep giving myself those damn needles every day.
It’s like a phantom limb, the love for those who do not exist. Real, but not real. And you never forget that wanting. And you never forget that love.
Corey Whelan
Program Director
The American Fertility Association
Categories
Infertility
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Secrets
May 20, 2009 - Wednesday
Posted by Corey
I was interviewed by Vogue Magazine today about the Manicures & Martinis Infertility Prevention Program. The editor wanted to know what the most important take home message from the series was. I circled around that for awhile and this is what I truly think. More than anything else on the planet, people are entitled to their own personal truth. The truth about themselves. And women deserve to know the truth about their own biological clocks and what their bodies can and can’t do.
Personal truth. In my view, people have the right to know. Were they were donor inseminated? Or adopted? Carried by a surrogate? Whatever it is, we all have the right to know.
You know what? Facebook has been very good to me. I have reconnected with friends and family I haven’t seen in years and years but never stopped loving. I have brought lots of family back into my life, among them, seven cousins, especially my cousin Robyn who is one of the true loves of my life. But another cousin too, who was adopted in 1955, the same year I was born. But you know what’s really weird – I don’t think he knows he’s adopted. And here we sit, reconnecting over coffee after all these years, and I have a secret. His secret. We are both in our fifties, and even after all this time, it’s so bizarre. I don’t think he knows that we are not biologically linked. And to tell you the truth, it is making me crazy.
God, how the world has changed since the 1950’s, it’s like another planet, not another era. I have a funny photograph of my cousin being bottle fed by his mom while she is holding a cigarette in the same hand. Child abuse by today’s standards.
My cousin has a right to know. And I don’t know what the hell to do.
Corey Whelan
Program Director
The American Fertility Association
Categories
Adoption •
Donor Sperm •
Fertility Preservation •
Infertility •
IUI •
Surrogacy
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