IF in the news, a missing happy new year post and something about how it has taken me 3 weeks to return

but I am still here. For a week I have been slowly writing pieces of posts, but mostly I've just been commenting and reading from the Creme de la Creme and will do a post on some of the amazing blogs I have encountered so far later this week.

Recently, I came across this article in the New York Times Magazine about Gestational Surrogacy and Egg Donation and loved the story, the way the author, Melanie Thernstrom, tells it and the fairytale happy ending she creates for her children. Friends criticize her for romanticizing third party reproduction--and she really does, in a way that at first concerned me--she refers to the young woman who donated gametes as her Fairy Goddonor, as one example. But as I read Thernstrom's story I realized that what she is doing is rewriting the fairy tale birth story that many women (and some men) invent before we start trying to conceive (or like, when we're 8 and playing house and then again as young feminists reading Our Bodies, Ourselves), before we know anything about infertility--the fairytale we realize we must grieve when we can't get pregnant on our own, and then grieve again when fertility treatments fail. She is rewriting this fairytale for her children, and herself, so that her children will understand and value their birth story.

I find this act very touching and I become convinced by the romanticism rather than skeptical of it. I think we need to reinstate the romanticism and naivete we lose during infertility. I welcome it here because by the end of the article we have a wonderful story about both surrogacy and egg donation. The skeptical side of me still acknowledges, along with the romanticism, the great monetary wealth it took to make this story happen: two gestational carriers, 1 egg donor, and before that, multiple rounds of IVF. This could never be my fairytale or the fairytale of most infertile couples. But despite this, she does write some very relatable passages about the experience of infertility in general, as well as fears she experiences along the way regarding a lack of control over the pre-natal health of her children, her long term relationship with her children's egg donors and surrogates and how to explain the genetic and gestational concept she ends up calling Twiblings. I am always thankful for an article that offers experience based information about infertility, treatment options and the different paths to family building. Definitely read it if you haven't already.

As opposed to the IVF news Jezebel chose to highlight this week about the Australian couple who aborted twin male fetuses conceived through IVF because they want a girl. The issue undermined by the sensational headline is that Australia, like many other countries, does not allow PGD to be used for sex selection in the absence of a genetic condition. It is actually a sad story (there is a link within the Jezebel text that will take you to the AU Herald, which does a much better job at describing the situation). The couple is currently fighting this regulation and if they lose, they plan to seek IVF in the US. I have heard of quite a few clinics that advertise IVF services for fertile couples wishing to "balance" their families with sex selection.

Slippery slopes, eh?

And here, in other news, Josh and Wendy buy a billboard (click on the image for link):


Creme de la Creme posts coming soon!