Guys and Infertility

As you may have noticed, there's not a whole lot out there on infertility from the guy's perspective.  As I come across any, I make sure to show them to DH in case he can get anything out of them.  So far, he hasn't found any of them to be much help, but he and I will both be interested to read a book we found out about (more on that later).  Even though DH didn't find them helpful for what he's experiencing, though, I wanted to share what I've found so far in case they can help anyone else's husbands.

The first article I came across was rather unexpected.  I was going through an old issue of Glamour that I hadn't read yet in order to throw it in the recycling, when I found this article written by Joe Conason about the experience he and his wife had with conceiving twins through IVF.  Joe wrote about trying to support his wife (and the mistakes he made in doing so), about the cost of IVF, and about the anxiety that he and his wife experienced through the failed attempts and then through her pregnancy.  I thought that Joe did an effective job of weaving together his own story with commentary on the state of infertility in America.

The second resource is one that I found on Melissa Ford's masterwork, Lost and Found and Connections Abound, or LFCA for short.  The LFCA is a sort of home base for the ALI (Adoption, Loss, and Infertility) blogging community.  It helps to connect bloggers with each other and share news and needs for support.  One of the sections of the LFCA is a listing of new ALI blogs, and on there I found Hope to be Daddy: A Guy's Infertility Voice.  It's an interesting blog both because of being from the guy's point of view and because this is a guy who really wants to be a father and is struggling with his own feelings about infertility rather than just struggling to deal with his wife's feelings.  Women are more likely than men to be the first one ready to start trying to conceive, the first one to become frustrated with conception does not happen, and the first one to want to seek treatment.  It would not surprise me if many men were to find the author of this blog hard to relate to because of how much he wants to be a father, but from my perspective, it's refreshing to see.

The other resource I've found so far is one that DH and I both heard about from different channels.  I saw a link on another infertility blog to this interview with comedian Marc Sedaka about his book What He Can Expect When She's Not Expecting.  I showed the article about the interview to DH, and he said that he had heard the same story on the news while he was driving.  I'm planning on picking up a copy of the book for us within the next few days, and I'll want to read it once DH is done.  I told him I was interested to see what Sedaka says to guys, similar to how I had snagged and read the copy he had been given of The Groom's Survival Guide.  I'll make sure to share my thoughts once I get a chance to read it, never fear!