I just returned from Orlando, where hundreds of specialists in reproductive medicine gathered for their annual convention -- largely focused on helping women get pregnant with up-to-date research and technology. Here is some of what I learned, and people I talked to.
Our Sponsors:
Posted October 21, 2011 at 9:00 AM
News from Reproductive Medicine conference
1. First, it's always a pleasure to reacquaint with Dawn Davenport, who does amazing things with her Creating a Family website. I consider us to be lone peers for each other, providing high-quality educational content for our respective communities. I focus on single women building families; she focuses on anyone using non-traditional methods to create a family. If you haven't visited her website yet, or listened to her radio show, please do.
2. I also reconnected with American Fertility Association, which also provides amazing resources for anyone facing fertility challenges, including excellent Fact Sheets, such as "Recurrent Pregnancy Loss" and LGBT family building.
3. I had a promising conversation with several pharmaceutical companies, about helping Choice Moms bring our message about the true value and pride in making this choice -- and thinking about this choice BEFORE you turn 35, so that you have better, less expensive options. Merck, for example, recently did a patient survey that revealed that 91% of those polled "would have seen a specialist sooner if they could do it all over again." EMD Serono, makers of Gonal-F injectibles, found that a majority of women underestimate the length of time it will take to get pregnant. Their survey concluded that "awareness needs to be raised around how long [women 35 or older] should wait before seeking help trying to conceive. Half of the women in their survey were single.
4. I also started talking to several online fertility pharmacy programs, about getting discounted prices for ChoiceMoms.org visitors.
5. I started exploring egg donor agencies that could partner with Choice Moms to bring high quality educational resources about that area, since I hear from so many of you who are finding that your own eggs are not likely to work, but you'd still like to carry a child to delivery.
6. I talked with the wonderful heart-in-the-right-place Dr. Sweet at Embryo Donation International. We are talking about potentially working together on facilitating the sharing of embryo donations specifically within the Choice Mom community. Many embryo donation agencies in the past have been less willing to work with single women, and through ChoiceMoms.org we are in a particularly unique position to offer special services within our own fast-growing network.
7. I talked with a genetics counselor at long-time Choice Mom-friendly sponsor California Cryobank who is passionately attempting to resurrect the idea of creating a registry of donor and half-sibling medical histories and updates, so that ALL families who have reported a pregnancy can be aware of any medical issues and non-issues related to the donor they used.
There is much more for me to share from the days I spent in Orlando, but I'll save them for another day. Stay tuned!
Mikki
Reader Comments
Posted October 21, 2011 at 10:45 PM
Mikki - It was wonderful meeting you. In speaking with you, your dedication to your members was clearly evident.
I hope we can indeed work together more closely as we figure out how your Choice Moms might be able to donate the cryopreserved embryos that they don't intent to use to other Choice Moms that haven't yet completed their infertility journey. Whether anonymous or open, I think there is a potential, by working together, to build families where they would otherwise not exist.
I will keep in touch.
Post a Comment
We ask you enter a valid email to reduce spam. This email will not show. But please remember this is a public page. If you do NOT want your comment to be approved for public viewing, indicate that in the comment and the administrator will be the only one to read it.
NOTE that we just learned of a bug involving yahoo addresses. They are apparently filtered by Google forwarding usually as spam. So if you have a yahoo email and you post a comment for approval, it might take longer for me to discover it for approval. We're working on solving this issue.
Comment Etiquette: Please do not post spam. Please keep the comments on-topic. Please do not post unrelated questions. Anything mean-spirited or off topic will not be approved.
Posted October 26, 2011 at 6:07 PM by Valerie
Thanks so much for advocating for us especially in the donor egg and embryo donation areas. For many, this is the only way to become pregnant and being a single woman can be a huge obsticle.