Persevering Through Infertility
A Collection of Real Life Journeys Towards Resolving Infertility
by
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Most of us enter adulthood choosing to have children and create a family. Becoming a parent is one of the most basic and cherished behaviors in our culture. It affords us the ultimate intimacy to create new life with a partner, to maintain and extend a family legacy, to share our cultural beliefs, and to help shape a new generation. What do you do if that choice is not available or is taken away from you? For approximately 15% of couples, 1 Infertility takes that choice away. While there are about 4 million babies born annually in the United States,2 there are also approximately 6.1 million couples that struggle with Infertility.3 Infertility is defined as the inability to conceive after one year of unprotected intercourse and/or the inability to carry a pregnancy to term.4 Women and their partners invest significant time, along with emotional, physical and financial resources to understand the process and problems involved in resolving their Infertility, all the while, struggling to understand the complexities that the Infertility roller coaster throws at them.
While men grow up with the likelihood of marriage and parenthood, women have it ingrained from early childhood. Little boys are taught to build skyscrapers with Leggos while little girls build families with Mommies, Daddies and babies. Women are brought up with the hope and expectation that we will become mothers and have a family. It is a given, and our birthright as females. Wanting a child is very different than motherhood. It is unfair that the “right” to have a baby supersedes an accident of fate. It is one of the greatest ironies that a 16 year old girl or a drug addict with limited financial, emotional or physical means, and minimal desire for a baby can have sex once, at any time of the month and get pregnant, while so many truly deserving parents struggle and fight, often times unsuccessfully cycle after cycle. It was startling to learn that even one third of pregnancies among married couples are unplanned.5 Life is NOT fair. 21st Century couples dealing with Infertility want the love, reward, fulfillment and fun of having children and will gladly trade off the compromise, exhaustion, frustration and guilt associated with parenthood. The irony is that many women spend half their lives avoiding pregnancy, when they are most fertile and the other half seeking it, devoting time and energy to harsh, degrading and potentially dangerous forms of human husbandry to give them the traditional authentication of womanhood. If Mother Nature is unfair to us, what recourse do we have?
Advances in technology over the years have opened many more options to Infertile couples to find new pathways to parenthood.
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About the Book
“Persevering Through Infertility” is a collection of the real life stories of individuals and couples who have experienced IVF, IUI, Secondary Infertility, Donor Eggs, Donor Sperm, Advanced Maternal Age, Diet, Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, Endometriosis, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Uterine Lining issues, Blocked Tubes, Male Factor, Surrogacy, Domestic and International Adoption, Embryo Adoption, etc. These men and women are courageous, they are determined, and they are focused. They are the most deserving to be parents, and due to a physical problem or a stroke of bad luck, they struggle with something that comes naturally for most.
Knowledge is the area where you have the most control. It gives you the power to make the right decisions for yourself, and provides you with the key to finding and choosing your resolution based on an educated decision, not a purely emotional one. It is the closest thing to the silver bullet we all seek. Unfortunately, for many, it sometimes takes years and the more time that goes by, the more the chances for success decline. That’s why shortening the learning curve is so critical. We are often so overwhelmed by the emotional attachments to our inability to conceive that we become paralyzed and take make decisions based on raw emotion, rather than educated choices. “Persevering Through Infertility” speaks from the heart, to the heart, and provides insight and perspective allowing the reader to find something to relate to in each story.
About the Author
Renee Bornfreund is a professional career woman who married later in life. She experiencing needles, blood tests, ultrasounds, diet, Acupuncture, Yoga, IUI, and IVF before giving birth to a daughter. Through her experiences, she has become passionate about educating those struggling with Infertility.
Mrs. Bornfreund is a former RESOLVE* Board member and has been published in the local RESOLVE newsletter, the About.com Infertility website and has been written up in MORE Magazine, FIRST Magazine, and the Houston Chronicle. She has become an expert and advocate on Infertility by default, through her own research and personal experiences, and has been a frequent speaker on panels and seminars for Infertility, IVF, Diet, Alternative Treatments and Advanced Maternal Age.