Miriam Zoll

This is not my normal sort of book. In fact, I kind of disliked it. It's in the genre of self discovery memoir, in this case centered around the author and her husband's quest to have a child.

What I disliked about it is that while emotions are important in a book exploring the emotional roller coaster of excessive promises and failed expectations that are so common — and so rarely talked about — in the fertility industry, Zoll rather overdoes it. Do we really need the long diversions into the author's childhood or her brother's ongoing life as a deadbeat? Do we need to hear about her journey to find her animal totem? While some mention of the author's background is necessary to understand the emotional process the author was going through, it seemed like every chapter was more than half general musing about the author's past, family, and insecurities. The book could have been half the length and still have painted an effective, personal, and emotional picture of the author's journey.

That said, the book contained a lot of information that is valuable to anyone who is curious about the fertility industry — and since my husband and I have been trying for a year and a half to become pregnant with no success, we certainly had curiosity (hence the 2 stars).

The largest lesson is that the media and general societal attitudes have hugely misinformed women when it comes to their fertility. A woman's fertility drops dramatically after her mid-thirties, precipitously after age 40, and even the best technology relies largely on luck for a woman whose body is just no longer going through the right physiological processes to support egg production and pregnancy. Birth is not impossible — not even uncommon — but it is much more difficult. The various fertility assistance techniques, in vitro fertilization (IVF) and donor eggs in particular, have a much lower success rate than our societal folklore would lead us to believe.

The second largest lesson is that the fertility industry is just that, an industry, and it does not — or at least did not for Zoll and her husband — do a good job of supporting the emotional experience of the couples involved.

Overall, this was a worthwhile read, although I suspect that there is a book out there — written or to be written — which can convey much of the same experience without being so annoying.… (altro)