We have an excellent group of fertility experts who provide sponsorship of Choice Mom resources. Periodically we go to them with "Ask the Fertility Expert" questions. Here's one that appeared on the discussion board recently, and the response of one of the doctors in our network.

One of the most exciting developments I see for Choice Moms in the coming years is the opening up of the relatively new embryo donation frontier for those women whose own eggs aren't working. New players in the field are working with single women.

"Women trying to conceive often forget the importance of taking care of themselves," said Dr. Lee Kao, of San Francisco-based Laurel Fertility Care. "We often see patients who are so focused on caring for everything else that they actually decrease their success by not focusing on themselves first."

When I hosted the first Choice Mom networking event, in San Francisco in 2007, one of the sponsors was a new egg-freezing company. The concept was in its earliest stages.

I have three requests in my Inbox, two of them quite unusual. Two of them for media-related projects. One related to a known donor for the San Fran area.

We've been busy assembling new fertility resources for our large community in the Trying: Fertility stage. Use this link to our new page of medications involved in fertility treatment.

This woman is doing a potential TV documentary about Choice Motherhood and is looking for interviewees, ideally in the San Francisco area.

Thanks to some great referrals, San Francisco-based Alta Bates IVF is now part of the Choice Mom family of recommended fertility specialists.

Kristin Kali, our Choice Mom friend at Maia Midwifery, is not in the San Francisco area full-time anymore, but she is providing several unique fertility classes and consultations when she's back in the area. Here are the details for January.

There are 20 major markets where Choice Moms live. There are Choice Moms everywhere, of course, but I'm focusing on 20 communities where this website gets the most traffic from single women. I'm building resource guides for the cities listed below, with your help.

It's amazing what we discover we don't know about how to conceive when we're really trying to. These three notable fertility specialists spell everything out on the "Choosing Single Motherhood" radio show.

Given the large number of questions on the Choice Mom discussion boards about fertility, and the fact that many of us don't realize until late in the game how fragile our fertility is, I couldn't do this topic justice on the website and in our networking events without our Choice Mom fertility experts.

When you are feeling isolated, angry, depressed or confused about the Choice Mom path, the discussion boards have become a good place to vent and share. But sometimes we need someone who not only understands the Thinking to Being stages, but is specifically trained to talk with us about our emotions.

I couldn't offer what I do on this website and at the Choice Mom networking events without the support of sponsors who specifically value the Choice Mom community. I've had the pleasure over the years of working with doctors from many Bay Area clinics. One of the warmest and most accessible of those has been Dr. Collin Smikle, of Laurel Fertility Care.

Many Choice Moms-in-the-making are dismayed to learn later in the game that they suffer from PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), which is one of the leading factors of female infertility. PCOS affects approximately 1 in every 10 women, and of those, about 45 percent experience fertility challenges.

It's the nurses who often provide the most important relationship for a woman trying to conceive, because every appointment to the doctor begins or ends with a nurse's check-up of your emotional, physical and mental health. Here is a list compiled by nurses at Laurel Fertility Care (San Francisco) for Choice Moms, about what they encourage women to understand before agreeing to any treatments.

The latest addition to the regional guides now being offered on ChoiceMoms.org is for Choice Moms in the Washington D.C. area. Click here for the guide-to-date. I welcome your contributions to the service providers and experts in that area who you think Choice Moms should be aware of.

Miscarriages are more common than we realize. Often women deal with their grief alone -- and wonder whether there was something they could have done to change the outcome. We asked San Francisco-based Choice Mom sponsor Laurel Fertility Care to explain why miscarriages happen, and how age factors in.

Since I've been keeping track of website traffic for two years now, I thought it would be interesting to share information about where we tend to live, what information we tend to look for on the website, and what's been happening since I relaunched the website with its new format in February 2010.

Trying to purposely conceive, by quietly fitting doctor inseminations in with work schedules, is highly stressful. Kim Guay, of A Clear Vision Organizing, spoke to Choice Moms at our San Francisco event about how to stay organized, well into our future lives as moms.

Whether you are inseminating at home, or with a doctor's care, here are 7 tips to help enhance your fertility, thanks to Dr. Lee Kao of Choice Mom sponsor Laurel Fertility Care:

Even if insemination wasn't your first choice for having a child, there is still an important factor of love in the equation, as Maia Midwifery's Kristin Kali talked about at our Choice Mom event in San Francisco.

Stress is natural. No matter how much we might put into place to avoid it, stress comes -- daily. According to Caylie See, of Acupuncture Kitchen (San Francisco), "It’s important to focus not only on what causes us stress, but on how we deal with it." Here are her seven tips, courtesy of her affiliation with Choice Mom sponsor Laurel Fertility Care.

If you need to get creative about finding ways to pay for fertility treatments, here are a few tips from Choice Mom-friendly Laurel Fertility Care (San Fran):

Nothing beats the recommendation of fellow Choice Moms about the doctors they entrusted to help them conceive. Following is a list of Choice Mom-recommended fertility specialists, with live links to fertility clinics that have supported in the past year the Choice Mom resources you find on this website and at our networking events. Use the comments field that follows to nominate your own favorites.

When we are actively TRYING to conceive, it's amazing how uninformed we can feel about figuring out WHEN during the month is the optimal time to make the insemination attempt. Here from Choice Mom-friendly Laurel Fertility Care (San Francisco Area) are six tips for detecting your ovulation.

In this week's tips from Choice Mom sponsor Laurel Fertility Center (San Francisco) we discuss the importance, and methods, of building a fertility support team for yourself.

It is important for a sleep-deprived mother to know where things are. Because when you and baby are struggling to keep nights and days straight, the last thing you need is to find out at midnight that you are out of baby Tylenol or wipes. And keeping the diaper bag packed with everything you need for three hours of errands is easier when you haven't just spent half hour looking for your keys.

I am happy to report that we have a new option to create five informal coffeeshop gatherings in a few cities in 2011. I'm reinvigorating an inquiry into which cities have women most interested in contact that they're not otherwise getting.

Laurel Fertility Center of the San Francisco area became a Choice Mom sponsor in May 2010, which means they will regularly be featured on this website for tips related to fertility treatment. Here are tips from the clinic's Dr. Aimee Eyvazzadeh about how to get the most for your fertility dollar.

At the San Francisco event, organizational specialist Kim Guay of A Clear Vision Organizing offered these tips for getting ready for parenthood.

There were a lot of new and pending parents at the San Francisco event in May 2010. Here are some of the great resources that were suggested by attendees.

At the recent San Francisco event -- as was the case in Austin and Atlanta -- women spoke to me individually, or with the group, about the intense emotions they felt in not being able to yet BECOME Choice Moms.

We're building an audio library featuring the best of our Choosing Single Motherhood radio show and Choice Chat podcasts. You can order the first of this collection, "Choice Moms Answer the Tough Questions: Do I Have a Dad?" (formerly a CD product, available here for immediate $7 download).