Since I love books and I love talking about books, I recently joined Mother Talk Book Club. Our first book came out and was sent to me, and it landed on my doorstep with a thud. I had no idea what the book would be, so imagine my surprise when I opened the package to see The Fertility Journal: A Day-to-Day Guide to Getting Pregnant by Kim Hahn and the editors of Conceive Magazine.

Umm...ok.

Sponsored by Conceive Magazine and published by Chronicle Books, I had never in my life seen anything like this. It's a diary where women who want to get pregnant list their cycles as they go, including diet, exercise, habits, weight, caffeine intake, basal body temp, you name it.

I nearly laughed.

No wait. I did laugh.

First off, how do you review a diary? Isn't that impossible? Isn't it like saying Behold! A notebook! Forsooth, for what dost thou say to me? (Yeah, I don't know why I'm thinking in Shakespearean either. Let's go with it.) Secondly, I've never, ever been on the "let's have a curry, have sex, and see what happens in nine months" side of the fence. I'm an IVF veteran, one of those bitter screechy laughing kind of women who mock films where a woman sneezes and gets pregnant, who rips apart articles that describe IVF the wrong way.

My inner cynic wanted to take this book and laugh. It wanted to blog about the ridiculousness of it all. Then my inner cynic dialled it down, realized it was out of its comfort zone, and got out a glass of wine and took a look.

The diary, it's not bad.

I'll be honest, I simply flipped through the book, basically ignoring the "how to get pregnant and write it down" phase. I do see that it probably is an excellent resource for women who approach things in an orderly and organized fashion - I want to get pregnant and I'm going to document kind of way. But I can't really speak to that. What I can speak to and did explore was the second half of the book, where the diary gets into fertility treatments. There's a short explanatory intro for the book in which the author describes some basics of fertility treatment. I think it gives a very good layman's summary of what a basic IVF cycle is and does.

You then have 6 weeks of diary entries, in which you can record questions, medication dosages, doctor appointments, thoughts that you are having, and there are even two pages to write out the hopes and frustrations that you may be having. The book even has a section to help a woman in the 2ww try to write out her anxieties.

I thought back to my first IVF cycle years ago, and I think I could've benefited from a book like this. Clear descriptions, a way of keeping track of everything, places for me to doodle or write "I hate that nurse!" in all caps if I chose. I can see that the diary does actually have a place for women who are new to the fertility game.

At the same time, I have to take exception with the author a bit - I felt she didn't address the emotional impact as well as she should've. I also have a real problem with the fact that she only has room for 2 fertility treatment cycles in the book (I think the average woman will take more than 2 cycles) and even more damning, at the end of fertility treatment cycle 1 she writes "And know that someday you'll be a wonderful mother, too."

I have a problem with that. I think that's sugar-coating what is a difficult and trying process. A large number of women don't succeed. Many women in that group go on to have a life without children. I think that statement is one more stab in the heart to those who go on to ultimately not have children.

Apart from that, though, I do think that this is a good resource for someone who is entering fertility treatment for the first time. I think the authors could even benefit from expanding on this and making a journal just for that market - women can use something to turn to that they trust during treatment times, something not filled with images of babies and women rubbing their stomachs. You could argue that if someone bought the book trying to have babies the "old-fashioned way" went on to not succeed, and had to go to section 2 of the book, might feel pretty bad that she had to face part 1, the part where she had all those hopes and dreams, each time she had to flip to the back.

-H.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:44 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 That line should have said "get thee a blog". By the time you get past the second cycle, you're ready to fling the book somewhere unsavoury anyway.

Posted by: Lut C. at May 28, 2008 11:08 AM (J3pcy)

2 Think I'm heading towards IVF .... I think your blog is more useful, honest and helpful than this sounds!! I can use my own diary and capitalise who I HATE!! )

Posted by: Moira at May 28, 2008 02:15 PM (Z6Qfm)

3 Quite honestly, the author may not have realized this. I know that I have to be *extremely* careful when talking about fertility to those who are having difficulties, because I'm the type of person who can say something I think is comforting and turns out to be a serious case of Foot In Mouth. (IOW, I pretty much have to practice saying totally generic support messages lest I say something very wrong.) So even though she went through IVF, the fact that she caught pretty early on in the process and didn't have to experience long-term frustration might mean that she doesn't realize how it can be.

Posted by: B. Durbin at May 28, 2008 04:41 PM (tie24)

4 I was capable of making my own lists of timings and drug doses etc and haven't bought baby books to fill in so I don't reckon I would be the ideal demographic for this book. I am a reader in bookshops though so would have flicked through it I'm sure if I was coming at this now. What I would have loved to have known about before I was on cycle 3 though was IF blogs and some help from a book like this in finding them would have been useful. Far more so than the annoyingly baby dust filled message boards which were easier to locate - although to be fair I do still keep up with my old clinic board on one of the big UK sites.

Posted by: Betty M at May 28, 2008 06:50 PM (+Rjj7)

5 A "stab in the heart." I could not possibly agree more. A tasteless and unfeeling comment.

Posted by: Charles at May 28, 2008 09:25 PM (maQJG)

6 I'm reviewing this tomorrow and I'm with you - it was good in certain ways but there were things that just weren't thought out for real infertility adventures.

Posted by: chicklet at June 02, 2008 05:16 AM (4IBh9)

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