How to Make a Family: The Blog

Conception Collaborators' Ears Should Ring With Voices of the Donor Egg Market

The DoubleX crowd is chewing up the question of whether or not donating your eggs is "smart" versus the stance that doing so equates to a woman selling her body.

I enjoyed reading the sentiments, but I think the proposed question is worded... awkwardly?

Granted, it's not much of a stretch to say that my DNA-carrying eggs are products of my body. It's reaching for a breaking point, though, when we label a woman's egg cells as "her body".

My whine might seem a tad moot, or at least uninteresting, but I think the repro med pros have to maintain a bit more than a passing curiosity about the perspectives of the women who are donating their eggs, some of whom are quoted in this XXfactor piece.

The Buddhist in me particularly likes the women's viewpoints on the related question of fertility hysteria and infertility treatment.

My favorite comment is from Samantha Henig, associate editor at DoubleX, who muses about the high-dollar offers beckoning to college co-eds with "just so" traits: "... I never thought about how insulting it would be to be told your eggs are worth less because you lack [those traits]. I think it's a sign of the desperation that infertility can spark, and how it can bring people to make these borderline-eugenic demands."

Well said. Are we listening?

Meanwhile... Coming Soon: Dining & Drinks in Atlanta! It's ASRM Time!

Did I really go all the way through September and half of October sans fresh blogpost?!

:::the Blog Goddesses shudder:::

Yes, and I'd gladly do it again for the same reasons, those being wrapped up in a (for once) pleasingly busy life away from the Blogosphere.

Besides, we're all about to be inundated with the Latest, Greatest, Bestest, Most Advanced, Most Alarming, Most Contrived Reproductive Medicine News that hits the America's every year around this time...

Live from Atlanta, it's the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine!

(Check out their count-down to the Big Event... )

So, although I feel a twinge of competitive guilt about my recent blog-silence, my sense of irresponsibility is mildly assuaged just by knowing that the ether will soon be filled with the happiest sounds of baby-making marketing. Again.

(And -- just to clarify -- I will never, ever be posting blognotes by 8 AM each day, even when life is dull.)

Eggs In the Middle of a Marriage

The people pulled into the baby-making whirlpool aren't always the sad-but-loving couples we like to imagine.

Sometimes, not everyone is on board with the big decisions inherent in fertility treatment. Sometimes, like in the case of Jackie Barr in Glasgow, individuals are simply along for the ride, against their will.

In this article from the Daily Record, Ms. Barr is interviewed about a tremendous longing that resonates with many an infertile woman. Eventually, the mother of two moved forward with her decision to donate eggs, in spite of her husband's clear objections.

The interview describes Stephen's response to Jackie's desire as moving from "complete shock" to his "finally agreeing" to talk more about the process at an IVF clinic. He wasn't Jackie's only loved one with reservations, which arose partly due to the lack of anonymity for UK egg donors.

In the end, Jackie's husband still "begged" her to not donate her eggs, a journey that involved hospitalization for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome and two young children who were confused about why they didn't get a baby sibling out of the deal. That, and 19 eggs retrieved for use by other women for making babies.

Did we ever resolve similar questions springing from other medical advances that allow women to be sole arbiters of their reproductive destiny? Is this more a matter of us not fully understanding the concept of marriage? Is it the result of the idea that honesty is relative and the individual's desires are the ultimate authority?

I'd like to hear from the Daily Record in a few years about how Jackie and Stephen and their two children are faring.

Finally. Can We Get Real About Old School Medicine?

I woke up this morning listening to NPR's Chana Joffe-Walt and David Kestenbaum explore the question "Are Doctors More Like Moms or Mechanics?"

Yes, I thought, finally. A really accessible description of this very non-traditional market -- health care -- that is "full of peculiarities" and that our very lives depend upon. (By the way, if you check out the link, be sure to "Listen to the story" from the page -- it's more entertaining and informative than the dry read sample on the webpage.)

As usual, I then checked a few blogs... lo and behold, Pamela Madsen is raising a ruckus (again), but this time instead of whistling a solo off in the distance (as she's been known to do), Pam's tune (Speaking Out in The Field Of Reproductive Medicine: It takes Courage) chimes in harmonically with what National Public Radio was just emitting.

The Internet has given us all the ability to know more about wellness, illness, and health care than any other information purveyor. Sure, it's also meant a lot of dangerous and ill-fated self-diagnosis scenarios, but for someone who was mucking around with sick people long before the Web was more than a Department of Defense contract, the difference in overall understanding is phenomenally clear. Heck, if the Internet had been around earlier, my grandmother might have known more about that boil she had me peering at on her leg... But seriously, we don't yet know the full impact on our society of the data proliferation and dissemination that has been enabled by the Web, though you can be sure those databases are in progress.

Now that our brains are filled to the brim with "how-to's" and "quick tips" and "faq's" on how these vessels we call "bodies" work, some subtler dynamics become more clear to us. Messages that have been (like Pam's) dismissed as personalized grumbling, even by over-educated academics and professionals from within the bowels of the health care beast, are being heard by more than just the crazy old ladies down the street.

The old hippie saying about paranoia and whether you really should be or not comes to mind. That's not to say that the best path right now is to harden into a complete "us versus them" attitude. After all, even the creepiest doctors were loved by their mothers once.

Okay, all snarky back-sliding aside, I've long ranted that consumers are the ones who let this quagmire happen. We wanted to believe in fairy tales, where the knight (doctor) in shining armor (medical school training) swoops by on that fiery steed (health care delivery system) and scoops us up with that comforting and strong arm (medical practice) and delivers us safely back to wholeness.

Sometimes I like to be dragged kicking and screaming away from my escapist fantasies.

Rather than wagging harsh fingers in our own faces at our naivete, let's pat our own little heads with compassion as we enter the brave new world of, finally, truly understanding that doctors are people, the institutions that envelop them are thus changeable even if faulty, and there's really nothing wrong with a round or two of 'Kumbaya' now and then. Finally.

Fundraising & Praying for Babies

I'm pretty sure that if we all did everything "right," there would be no child born into any household that wasn't fully financially afloat.

So much for that pie in the sky.

It comes up from time to time, the notion that access to infertility treatment should be just as much a "right" as access to other things, like therapies to quell life-threatening conditions.

In all these years of talking about it and listening to others, I've decided the arguments are usually circular. Maybe we need to redefine "right".

Dear Abby's latest incarnation recently vented her 'negative gut reaction' toward a reader's query about throwing a fertility treatment fundraiser. Needless to say, the TTC Crowd's reaction was quick.   Fortunately, the charge was led by Melissa Ford, who shed a little light on the columnist's missed opportunity to help the inquiring reader. Melissa offered well-founded points -- that aside from the necessarily judgmental quagmire of healthcare access and priorities, other family-building adventures, like adoption, cost a heap, too, Abby.

Then Padmini Mangunta put a little ethics spin on the discussion over at BeliefNet. Her open-ended questions -- is there a line that infertility patients cross in their expectations? -- demonstrate an intention for harmony and understanding, a wise stance for any person who hasn't yet started down the baby-making path. Padmini lost me for just a trace when she wrote "God-willing, I very much hope to have a family one day."

Shades of those old online discussions about the pain caused by using such references to juxtapose those with and those without children. In effect, if God wills you have children, what's up with those who don't get their heart's desire?

On a somewhat related note, Michele Kennon, who is the Dallas Infertility & Miscarriage Examiner wrote on her more personal blog, The Squawkery "Is it possible to be on G-d's bad side?" A lot of women I know would answer with a resounding 'absolutely' at certain times in their life.

So back we come to the whole notion of doing things "right" -- whether that's in terms of bringing new life into the world or choosing whole wheat over bleached flour.

And the circle just goes on.