🌈 What does infertility feel like
🌈 What does infertility feel like
National Infertility Awareness Week, Fertility Rules excerpt, egg freezing FOMO, and a dispatch from Fortune Brainstorm Health
👋 Greetings, friends. It’s National Infertility Week (NIAW), and for those of us that faced fertility challenges, a time to reflect and bring attention to the prevalence and scale of this problem. For my part, I experienced three pregnancy losses in total; two before the birth of my first son and one in between. Due to complications with my uterus during and after the birth of my second son, I cannot safely carry another pregnancy. And while I feel incredibly fortunate to have two healthy kids, and two was always my goal, I still felt a sense of loss that another pregnancy wasn’t an option.
If you’re a reader of this newsletter, you know the stats: 1 in 6 people globally experience infertility. But something we don’t talk about nearly enough is what infertility feels like—and that it isn’t just experienced by first-time parents. Some studies indicate more than half of all IVF cycles happen due to secondary infertility or difficulty getting pregnant after conceiving naturally and later giving birth. I must admit that even with my wealth of research, the miscarriage that happened between my two sons came as a shock, even knowing the above.
No two journeys are the same, and how we feel, and process infertility can be very different. So in honor of NIAW, I’m sharing an excerpt from Fertility Rules that shares what infertility felt like for me.
Fertility Rules excerpt: Learning to be happy for others but devastated for myself
Enduring five pregnancies and giving birth somewhat traumatically to two now very frisky boys was the most transformative and stressful period of my life. I used grief counseling to process the first two miscarriages so I could relax somewhat before our first son was born, as I was an anxious mess looking for anything and everything to go wrong.
During my season of infertility, I also had to learn how to be happy for others but sad for myself. I wasn’t always good at it. During an outing with a pregnant friend, I had to leave early to go home and cry. Seeing her cute bump and glowing happiness was too much. I felt despair and primal anger for what had happened to me and envy in my bones. And I was happy for her. But I was devastated for myself.
So here is a reminder that it’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to have moments where you are in fact not happy for your pregnant or new parent friend and perhaps even resentful. All feelings are valid feelings. Work through them in whatever way works best and try to make peace with the reality that you are not fully in control of this process. That was, for me, the hardest thing to reconcile, that even with good behavior and habits and choices, things do not always work out the way you want, when you want.
🌟 Fertility Rules gets a starred review on Booklist
It’s always nice to get a good review. But as a book nerd who grew up going to the library often and later worked at one during college, I’m honored that Fertility Rules received a starred review in Booklist, the American Library Association’s official magazine, and that it was the review of the day.
For those who haven’t preordered yet, Barnes and Noble is also offering 25% off through the end of today, April 28, with the code PREORDER25.
Dispatch from Fortune Brainstorm Health
Current status: energized (also exhausted) after a whirlwind trip to LA to speak at Fortune Brainstorm Health. My panel on (what else?) fertility was led by the inimitable Deena Shakir, and I joined Gameto CEO/founder Dina Radenkovic and Alife CEO/founder Paxton Maeder-York for a spicy conversation in which we all agreed it’s time to bring men into the fertility conversation.
👀 What I’m reading
🔮 The future of fertility From artificial wombs to ending ovarian aging (and menopause), this piece features one of my favorite companies in the space, Gameto, and covers the possible directions our technology and assisted reproduction-heavy future could go.
💴 Report: The state of fertility and family benefits in 2023 Packed with factoids (97% of women do not feel they did not have enough information about fertility treatments or cost, and over half leave fertility clinics with more questions than answers), the latest Maven dive into fertility benefits shows how important they are to current—and prospective—employees and how much work we still have left to do.
💤 Journey into sleep In 2022, the American Heart Association advised physicians that asking patients how many hours they sleep is as important as checking their blood pressure, smoking status, diet, and exercise habits. This illustrated tour reveals why scientists believe sleep matters more than we know.
🥚 With egg freezing increasingly common, fertility clinics hike storage fees Is it higher costs related to supply chain pressure, fallout from storage tank disasters, and inflation, or do clinics know they have a captive audience? Regardless, the number of egg-freezing procedures doubled, and embryo freezing rose by 60% between 2015 and 2020.
🏃♀️ Wearing a sports bra increases running performance TIL greater knee stiffness may be associated with improved running performance, and breast support is a key influence.
🧬 Anonymous sperm donors tracked down by their children using DNA tests Before 2005, donating egg and sperm anonymously was an option. The advent of consumer-grade genetic testing has eradicated any hope for anonymous donors—even those who donated before these technologies took off—to stay that way.
🥚 Egg freezing FOMO is too real Breakdown of egg freezing trends with a focus on Asia, where the procedure only opened up to single Singaporean women this year and, with the exception of Hunan province, is still off limits for nearly all unmarried Chinese women.
🤰 There’s more to your uterus than housing kids I can’t use my uterus again, but at least I got to keep it. If you’re wondering why I care, read this excerpt from the book Womb. It reveals the dormant role of the uterus in a woman’s body, including its potential links to mental health and cognitive ability.
Catch me online and IRL
April 28: Swehl: Combining Pregnancy and Real Talk
May 1: Oath’s All the Feels conference