Care and Feeding | Slate's parenting show - The Waves: What I Wish I Knew Before I Started IVF
The Waves: Gender, Relationships, Feminism
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 903 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2022
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this bonus episode from our friends at Slate's The Waves podcast: We’re talking about infertility treatments–and what happens when they don’t work. The Waves producer Cheyna Roth shares her personal struggles and talks about going through IVF with Slate’s Dear Prudence columnist, Jenée Desmond Harris. They talk about what they wished they had known before starting IVF, how to be a good friend of someone experiencing infertility, and Jenée offers advice on how to cope with IVF. Later in the show, Cheyna talks to author Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos about the ethics of the infertility industry, what to say to a loved one who is going through treatments, and what it means to be an “IVF survivor,”
In Slate Plus, Cheyna and Jenée talk about the slippery slope to IVF and its high price tag. And Slate’s Lili Loofbourow shares what happened when she tried to get insurance to cover IVF.
Additional Reading:
“An IVF Survivor Unravels ‘Fertility’ Industry Narratives,” by Pamela Tsigdinos
“Would You Tell Someone You Were Infertile?” by Pamela Tsigdinos
“As The Dark Side of IVF Slowly Comes Into Focus, EvenMore Transparency Is Needed,” by Pamela Tsigdinos
Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus and June Thomas.
Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the waves. |
| 0:10.0 | Slates podcast about gender, feminism, and this week, the insanity of dealing with infertility. |
| 0:16.3 | I'm Shaina Roth, producer for the waves. |
| 0:18.8 | I wanted to talk about IVF and infertility because it's something my husband and I have dealt with for |
| 0:24.2 | about five years now and something that about 10% of women in the US of child-bearing |
| 0:30.1 | age struggle with as well. So here's my experience with it. We wanted two kids. |
| 0:36.8 | That was always the dream, maybe more but at least two. And when we finally got pregnant after our second IVF transfer, we assumed, well, it worked once, |
| 0:47.4 | whatever wasn't working was fixed. And we thought for sure our third and final embryo would work and we'd finally be off this roller coaster. |
| 0:57.4 | We gave the embryo a nickname. We had the embryo's picture on our fridge. We thought the embryo would be a girl. |
| 1:06.0 | But the next round of IVF didn't work. |
| 1:10.0 | Now, here we are, out of embryos. We've been trying IUI which is intra-unerin |
| 1:16.7 | insemination a procedure that's less invasive than IVF where they essentially |
| 1:21.5 | pump you full of hormones and when the time is right |
| 1:24.3 | place your partner's sperm directly into the uterus using a catheter. |
| 1:28.4 | So far we've been through three rounds of that. The first one actually worked, but I had a miscarriage after a week and now |
| 1:37.2 | we are in the middle of deciding what to do next. It is an incredibly isolating and lonely experience. |
| 1:47.0 | And today, I just wanted to feel a little less alone in the world and I wanted other people who are going through |
| 1:55.2 | this to maybe feel a little less alone as well. So when we come back from the break I'm going to talk to Slate's very own dear prudence, |
| 2:05.1 | Janay Desmond Harris, about her own journey to get pregnant via IVF. |
| 2:09.6 | We're going to talk about the one thing she wished she knew about infertility when she was younger, and she's going to give some advice for how to cope with the |
| 2:15.7 | uncertainty of infertility treatments. Later in the show, I'll talk with author Pamela Mahoney |
| 2:21.6 | Signinus about the ethics of the infertility industry, what to say to a friend |
... |
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