From Infertility to Lessons In-Fertility
Bagels, Ice Cream and the Casualties of the Infertility Industrial Complex
Seventeen years ago, my husband's aunt -- an impeccably credentialed professor of nutrition -- sent me a study proving that increased consumption of bagels leads to higher pregnancy rates. I was, at the time, in search of a miracle cure for my furiously rising follicle stimulating hormone levels, which -- according to similarly well-documented studies -- reduced my remaining childbearing years to zero. As fond as I was of bagels, they didn't quite fit my image of libido lifting edibles. I opted for no radical shift in bagel consumption.
Instead, an entirely unprecedented idea came: for the first time in my life I chose to ignore the opinion of experts, and launch a research project of my own. In a last-ditch effort to prop up my wilting ovaries, I began a physical and emotional overhaul with radical changes in my diet and rigorous self-examination. My readings of medical studies were replaced by volumes on the rejuvenating power of fresh fruits and the hormone balancing effect of whole grains. I downed cocktails of vegetable juice, visualized ripe follicles fusing with eager sperm, jumped rope, recorded my dreams, stood on my head to enhance blood flow to my pelvis, and -- following a friend's recommendation -- made love on bright red sheets only. None of these measures were based on published research, yet each of them made perfect sense to me.
Eight months later, a positive pregnancy test validated my experiment. Not to mention that my healing regimen cleared up chronic rheumatism and debilitating sinus headaches.
Last year chat rooms were abuzz with the happy news of ice cream as the latest fertility-boosting superfood. This in response to a Harvard-based study that found women eating ice cream two or more times a week had a 38 percent lower risk of infertility than those who indulged less than once a week. After a round of disappointing pregnancy tests and an onset of sugar blues, enthusiasm waned and a somewhat more sober relationship to ice cream ensued. Notably, no footnote in the current article spoke of the observations in a 1994 study in the American Journal of Epidemiology showing greatest fertility decline in populations with highest milk consumption. And all but forgotten was the 1992 study in Clinical Endocrinology pointing out the inverse relationship between caloric intake and increased ovarian function.
Flooding our information receptor sites with misleading data turns the biological clock into a time bomb. Fear -- as damaging as it is to women and men with compromised reproductive function -- is an effective marketing tool. The more fearful and helpless we feel, the more money we spend for "expert" help. The rising casualties of the Infertility Industrial Complex are revealed only to the members of the baby-rush subculture: patients and doctors. And few of us speak of the scars inflicted.
Most physicians remain mute about the dangers of the commonly accepted approach to treatment. ("Not to worry, I'll keep going until you tell me to stop," a cavalier gynecologist told one of my clients, after her thirteenth medicated intra-uterine-insemination). They too wait for the certainty of studies to reveal the health risks of repeated cycles of hormone stimulants. Tragically, some of those risks may not surface for decades. (NYT "Outcomes: Fertility Treatment and the Next Generation" 3/27/07).
Achieving a healthy pregnancy is still one of the challenges where certainty eludes even the best and the brightest.. Something about conceiving a child makes it startlingly clear that we are more than a collection of well-designed organs. To participate in it consciously requires an honest commitment to oneself, to another human being and to some mystery that breathes within the world.
For me, that first sip of beet-red juice fifteen years ago forever changed my relationship with my body and my view of disease. Those of us who, albeit involuntarily, travel the scenic route to parenting, make up a global community. How that community affects our health care system and economy, depends on the choices we make.
The not-yet-born, who still know everything" is a phrase from Mary Oliver's poem "In Blackwater Woods." I wonder what the not-yet-born are trying to tell us these days. Does the rising number of state of the art baby-making clinics render the earth more inviting? Or would they rather see fields of wind turbines, lively classrooms, or counseling centers for at risk youth?
Julia Indichova is the author of Inconceivable (Broadway Books 2001) and The Fertile Female (Adell Press 2007) and the creator of the Fertile Heart Ovum Process, an original, health and fertility enhancing mind-body program.
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