My Psychic Panic Attack or Infertility Doesn't Become Us

So I must have had a psychic panic attack or something like that last night because this morning, in my aol in-box was an email from headbutler. A site, which incidentally, I really like. He reviews books and movies and stuff. And he sends emails when he has a new review in the offering. Today's selection is "Waiting for Daisy" by Peggy Orenstein. Which he goes on to describe in the email below. Suffice to say, it's a book about an educated woman who's over 37 years-old and her ordeal of trying to have a child-- the toll it took on her finances, her marriage, and her life. Headbutler then goes on to tell we women over 37 that we owe it to ourselves to read the book. Why? So we can throw ourselves off of a building? Here's the thing. We women over 37 know the worst case scenario and the best case scenario and still, it doesn't change much for us. That's the problem. If you don't have a husband, you can't invent one. Well, you can, but that doesn't really help with the sperm issue or all the issues that follow. If you have to go through the ordeal, you have to go through the ordeal. Not to say it's not a fabulous book. I don't know. I haven't read it. But he recommends it. Because he's been through the same thing.

Yes, there's something comforting about reading accounts of other people's struggles when they're similar to the ones you've been through. I know because I'm reading "The Love They Lost" right now. Which is alternately comforting and depressing. It's about the toll divorce takes on the kids and how they function in relationships-- i.e. what they don't know know because they never had any healthy role models to follow of a healthy relationship or marriage. And the striking thing is how different people can be -- even different sexes-- and how similar their reactions can be from just one seminal event. Of course, that has a lot to do with whether the divorce was an angry one and how the parents handled it-- which before all of those studies about the impact it had on children-- wasn't always the best. More on that later...

Here's the email from headbutler:


Dear Friends,

The subtitle --- "A Tale of Two Continents, Three Religions, Five Infertility Doctors, an Oscar, an Atomic Bomb, a Romantic Night and One Woman's Quest to Become a Mother" --- could make you gag from the cuteness.

But Peggy Orenstein is a Contributing Writer to The New York Times Magazine, a position not easy to come by.

She has written eloquently about women's issues.

And, after a series of medically-assisted efforts to have a child, she and her husband have a happy ending (or, rather, beginning) --- they're now going through life as "Daisy's parents."

So I forgave Peggy Orenstein that cutesy-pie subtitle and read her book.

I had another reason: In vitro fertilization is a personal interest. In 2000 and 2001, I paid for three of them. I like to say that there's no book I can't write in a 4,000-word piece of journalism, but my wife, Karen Collins, beat me. She told the story of our experience --- with its unlikely happy ending --- in a 1,500-word column in Harper's Bazaar. I have only to glance at it to be reminded of the early-morning blood tests, daylong hormonal surges, nightly injections and the rollercoaster of hope and despair.

If you have thrown your dreams of parenthood into the chill of the laboratory, this book will bring every memory to the surface.

If you are thinking about supplementing old-fashioned procreation with science, this book is a good field-guide to what lies ahead.

And if you are a woman in your 30s, this book should ring like a warning bell in the night --- at 37, you move into the "elderly gravid" cohort, and the chances that you'll become a mother start to drop dramatically.

So....if you know a woman in her 30s ....or are a woman in your 30s....you owe it to her/yourself to click...

This is when you go to www.headbutler.com and read the whole review on "Waiting For Daisy."