Waiting for Babies

Rare are the men willing to share their voices in this field, but the struggle is no less real for them, and the stigma of male infertility can be as equally difficult as it is for women. We bring together a panel of two men who share their struggle, along with 3 fertility specialists in honor of men's health month and the opening of the Art of Infertility at Venice Arts in Los Angeles. Recorded live on June 9th, 2018. 

What if the stigma around infertility, and women's health in general, is in the word infertility itself? Where did it come from and how do we try to change the narrative when even what's written in medical textbooks is biased against the patients themselves? Dr. Robin E Jensen talks about her book "Infertility: Tracing the History of a Transformative Term," and how we went from barren to sterile to infertile, and maybe where we go next. 

Infertility is depressing, even if depression isn't something you've experienced before. The whole process of infertility treatments, between the medications and the procedures, can often make it worse. On rare occasions, it can even quite literally take someone to the edge. And it nearly did…

Being an infertility survivor, Temple Professor Lisa Grunberger wrote a primer on the A to Z of Infertility. Upon hearing an art exhibition was coming to her town, she decided to turn that primer into a play and Almost Pregnant was born.

With a long family history of infertility on both sides, Lizzie & John were worried, but they had luck the first month they tried and their son Luke was born after an uncomplicated pregnancy.  3 years later and ready to have another, what they thought would be smooth sailing turned into all the things they were worried about. Welcome to Secondary Infertility...

Elizabeth and Scott tried for over a year to conceive before becoming instant parents of 3 girls after his sister got sick. When the girls moved away, they started trying again and years of frustration followed. Maria and Kevin were barely 25 when they landed at a fertility specialist, with options they weren't interested in. After randomly meeting in DC, they combined their passions and conceived of something to help everyone going through what they were. Our live episode was recorded on stage at our launch party in Philadelphia on August 9th, 2017 at We Work in Northern Liberties.

What happens when infertility stops being about getting pregnant and starts being about actually having a healthy baby? Jen and Jeff seemed to have the getting pregnant part down. That second part, though, never seemed to go right. Once they finally found out what was going wrong, and even had a possible solution, the road ahead was still long and unsure.

What happens when getting pregnant isn't the difficult part, but staying that way is? How do you hold yourself together when every miscarriage feels like you are broken in two? This is the face of recurrent pregnancy loss. We take a break from our stories to let an expert, Dr. Lora Shahine, guide us through. 

Jessica and her husband left the city for a nice house in the suburbs ready for a big family. Getting pregnant initially was easy, but what followed was anything but.  An ectopic pregnancy, surgery, secretly taken blood work and a diary of angry thoughts all came next and put them on a fertility roller coaster they didn't think would end.

Steve and Cassie had a whirlwind romance that went from a long distance courtship to marriage to quickly trying to conceive. It took a year of trying to find that Steve was missing a key component to making things work: sperm. After a surgery no one had ever heard of, and a final answer on what the problem was, they had what should have been an easy path forward. As we keep learning, few things are easy in the fertility world.

Without ever trying to get into the fertility field, patients kept pulling me in one by one from my first day in practice.  With a unique vantage point of walking alongside those trying to conceive, often in the fertility clinic with them, I got to experience the hopes, the tears and not least of all the foibles and surreality of the process. 15 years later, the stories just kept piling up, and no one seemed to be telling them.  

Stephanie and Bryce fell in love when they were just 19. Married by 21, they always knew they wanted to have children, but life kept getting in the way. By the time they finally decided to start trying 10 years later, things didn't go exactly as planned. From ovulation test kits to IVF treatments, to a miscarriage, they were private throughout their struggle - wanting to avoid the unintentionally hurtful comments and questions from family and friends. Here is their story.