Ten years ago, just before I turned 30, I left my nuchal appointment for my first child, went straight to my work computer, and quickly banged out an “I’m Going To Be A Mother!” email to send to my 5,000 closest friends.

Few of my friends back then were married, let alone having kids. I was a pioneer (I later went on to become a pioneer among my peers in divorce, of course), and an oblivious one. It didn’t occur to me that other people’s reaction to my news could possibly be anything but happiness (mildly uncomprehending happiness, perhaps, but happiness nonetheless). Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, Friends, infertility, pregnancy, pregnant

We truly are an entitlement-driven culture.

I’m not talking about welfare or tax breaks–I’m talking about people feeling entitled to KNOW things they have no business knowing. I could blame it on the internet, or too much information, or Facebook for encouraging over-sharing. Truthfully, though, this sort of butting in happened waaaay before the internet age made everyone experts on any number of things, including medicine, politics, and entertainment. My favorite examples, though, involve knowing (and judging) someone else’s childbearing decisions. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Facebook, infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy

Ezra is asleep in his crib. His lips purse and pucker as if he’s sucking on a bottle. He is peaceful, even when he is awake. Awake, he stares at everything, fascinated by his surroundings, and giving smiles as payment for even a moment of attention. When my students ask me for examples of modern day miracles, Ezra is the obvious answer.

We named our son Ezra, Hebrew for help and support, because he is the manifestation of all the help we received in our efforts to become pregnant. We were told it would be next to impossible to conceive on our own. Besides my rampant endometriosis, I have a low reserve of sub-par eggs, and my husband has morphology issues with his sperm. On our third IVF cycle, the doctor retrieved 18 eggs, but only one embryo survived to transfer five days later. Ezra. So yes, Ezra is the obvious answer. He is our miracle baby. But the truth is, my understanding of miracles has changed. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: infertility, ivf

I think that we women support each other in so many ways by sharing our experiences, yet we have done a disservice by not talking honestly about fertility treatments.

I know that I’m not a worst-case scenario. I already have a child. The extent of my problem is that I’m over 40 and I don’t have a lot of time. My tubes are clear, my egg reserve looks good, I ovulate regularly, and my hormone levels are peachy. Plus, my husband’s sperm count is equivalent to 10 non-vegan men (my doctor described his semen as “dynamite”, leaving me to deal with my husband’s hugely inflated ego for days). And yet, we have been trying to get pregnant for almost a year and a half to no avail (five chemical pregnancies and one miscarriage). Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: featured, fertility treatment, infertility

The following piece is written by the husband of frequent Kveller contributer Cara Paiuk. Cara has written about the ups and downs of her fertility treatments, and here, Alejandro offers the man’s perspective.

“Do you have the specimen?” the pretty nurse behind the counter asked me. I timidly handed over the plastic jar with my name on it. “Ummm, I noticed that on this form here it says that we weren’t supposed to use lubricant. Uhhh, I didn’t know that. Is the, er, specimen ruined?”

A few moments later, she handed me a new jar and told me that I had to try again. And so, my one contribution to my wife’s fertility treatment I had managed to screw up. I felt embarrassed to be in that office, embarrassed of what I had to do next, and embarrassed that I had somehow let Cara down. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Dads, dude week, infertility, ivf

The following piece is by the husband of Kveller’s contributing editor, Carla Naumburg. Carla has written about her experience with IVF in the past, so we asked Josh for the man’s perspective.

When I was asked to write about in-vitro fertilization (IVF) for Kveller’s Dude Week, I wasn’t sure they’d picked the right person. My recollections of the experience were sort of boring and the entire experience–both times–was overshadowed by the births of our two wonderful girls (now 3.5 and 1.5). It took my wife, Carla, to remind me that our experience was far from normal and that IVF is always easier for the male partner.

IVF is an incredibly complex (and, for the woman, invasive) process. It involves months of hormones, injections, tests, procedures, and the highly skilled hands of numerous medical professionals. It also requires a lot of luck. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: dude week, featured, infertility, ivf

The bill comes every month, and it goes right into the pile, along with the power and cable bills, the mortgage and gas. It gets paid every month, but unlike the other ones, this one always gives me a moment of pause. This bill is from a lab about 10 miles from our house, where we are paying to store two frozen embryos. Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: infertility, ivf

All the Jewish parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.

- On Slate, one couple’s story of how to make a baby, the IVF way, accompanied by a very telling slideshow. (Slate)

- In Germany, a 13-pound baby was born. He was the 14th child of his 528-pound diabetic 40-year-old mother. But the real crazy part? His name is Jihad. (Babble)

- A new study suggests that if you want smarter kids, you should space them at least two years apart. It’s also not such a bad idea if you want any semblance of sanity. (Freakonomics)

- In the New York Times, Jennifer Gilmore offers a beautiful, stirring, and often painful look at her journey to adoption. (NYT)

- Here’s a closer look at “extreme parenting,” from pageant moms to football dads. (OWN)

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: adoption, extreme parenting, infertility, ivf, roundup

All the Jewish parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.

- Occupy Wall Street becomes a family affair, and our own Jordana Horn writes about it. (TODAYMoms)

- Fodder for the next Republican debate? A federal advisory committee is advising that 11- and 12-year-old boys be inoculated for HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cervical cancer and other cancers. Since 2006, the CDC has been recommending that girls, ages 11 and 12, receive the vaccination. (The New York Times)

- Orthodox couples struggling with infertility say they face social isolation. (Ynet)

- Children who receive what a Stanford researcher terms “process praise” (“You must have tried really hard”) are more resilient and less risk-averse than their peers who receive “person-based” praise (“You are really smart”), a new study shows. (Motherlode)

- Babble picks its Top 50 Dad Blogs, with Lesbian Dad taking the top spot in the “most groundbreaking” category. The Busy Dad Blog was named “funniest,” and Matt, Liz and Madeline “most confessional.” (Babble)

- Among the things that stay-at-home moms and working moms feel most guilty about: Their messy homes, according to a new report. (The Juggle)

- Off-Broadway, Linda Lavin takes on the “esteem-shrinking” Jewish mother. (The New York Times)

- The performance artist we told you about last week, the one who was planning to give birth before a crowd of gallery-goers, had her baby, inside Brooklyn’s Microscope Gallery. Clearly the mother, Marni Kotak, wasn’t using Kveller’s Jewish Baby Name Finder; she named her nine-pound, two-ounce son Ajax. (The Washington Post)

Happy Challah-ween!

• Posted in Parenting
• Tags: Dads, infertility, occupy wall street, roundup

Photo by Mary Gardella

If you or someone you know is struggling with infertility, Melissa Ford is your go-to girl. She’s taken her own experiences with infertility and used it for the greater good–authoring the blog Stirrup Queens, and the book Navigating the Land of If, which offer insight and invaluable resources for anyone struggling with the trying task of trying to conceive. We spoke with her about infertility, the balancing act of a working mother, and of course, her twins!

Resources often offer plenty of physical things you can do to deal with the process of infertility, but what are some emotional tips and tricks that can aid in this difficult time?

I think just honoring the fact that there is an emotional component to infertility can go a long way. So many times we feel guilty for mourning, but infertility is about loss. The loss of a pregnancy, the loss of privacy, the loss of time, the loss of dreams. So giving yourself the space to feel whatever you need to feel is a starting point.

The other advice I always give is to do what you need to do to get through a moment (just as long as you don’t create more problems for yourself along the way). Skipping a cousin’s baby shower may create more problems than solutions, but skipping a co-worker’s shower – if you’re not in a good space to go – is probably fine in the context of self-preservation.

Read the rest of this entry →

• Posted in Pregnancy
• Tags: featured, infertility, Jewish interviews