SEXUALITY, ILLNESS, AND HEALTH: FERTILITY AND SEXUALITY- SOME OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS

Here are some of the recommendations I give to the couples after consultation with their referring doctor.

1. It is not true that “just when someone adopts, they get pregnant.” There are many such stories, but statistics do not bear them out. Nonetheless, a necessary first step in solving a fertility problem is to discuss together what options you will or will not accept. Would you adopt if necessary? What age, gender, race and health-status child would you consider? Why do we want à child anyway? Don’t fid1 for me simplistic “just adopt and you’ll get pregnant” or “just relax and take a vacation” ploys. Fertility, all of loving and life, is much more complex than that.

2. Do you want a child or a baby? Babies sound nice and have millions of effective press agents, but they bring with them bundles of problems, too. Talk over the fact that parenting is an approximately seventy-year phase of development during which you will try to help someone become more mature than you are. Do you want t° he parents together, or are there individual ambivalences that may need talking out, perhaps with a counselor or clergyperson? Learning to cooperate and share parenting and the continuing development of parenting goals and expectations is one of the most intimate parts of marriage. It is a form of sharing available only within a relationship committed to nurturing the lives of persons growing within and from that relationship.

3. Don’t panic. No matter what you hear, almost half of the couples in the United States have some trouble with fertility. Anxiety and fear won’t help, so remember the perspective of your relationship. You have somebody already. You are just trying to add to the group.

4. It’s not your fault or his fault or their fault. We just don’t know enough about fertility to blame anybody anyway, and there are women getting pregnant every day who were told they were never going to have a child. Think of this issue as a systems issue, not an individual issue.

5. Just as in parenting, you must not personalize the problem. When parents take the credit or diminish their self-worth because of their children, they experience family problems. If you are trying to have a child to prove something, such as your masculinity or femininity, you are probably getting in your own way.

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