Infertility
Sinead ends her residency at sigla blog with a bomb of a piece - so honest, well written and clear. It certainly ensures that I'll be reading her blog forever.
She speaks uncompromisingly about her possible infertility. Read it. My synoposis will do her no favours! I can't comment at her site so I'm commenting here....
Sinead mentions 2 things that I want to note -
1. The Chlamydia problem. It's real. It's serious and noone's talking about it. We've ads about "it only takes 1 sperm" but nothing about this very serious health risk to young women especially. I posted a while back on new research about teenage sex and depression - as a society we must examine what exactly we want teenagers to be doing. (well what message we want to send anyway) Chlamydia is a disease that can affect any age but there is a proven increased risk related to early onset of sexual activity.
2. IVF.
It doesn't always work - it fails 75% of the time.
I'm not going to go on about its expense etc. Martina Devlin has written loads about the emotional expense.
While there are many women who will be infertile due to disease or medical treatment, there are many more who have unexplained infertility that is linked to nothing. I read some woman recently (no idea where - probably a Sunday paper) giving out about fertility specialists "scaremongering" about the ideal age to get pregnant (early 20s) and 2006 should be a year free from such bullying.
That's rubbish. Anne Crittenden's "The Price of Motherhood" paints a picture of an IVF clinic waiting room where 40 something women are hoping desperately for the final thing-to-do to materialise. This is the reality of modern life.
There has to be sensible middle road somewhere - I don't know what exactly and most of these great sociological ideas are pretty hard to put into action. For example I do like the idea of an early-ish marriage followed by time off for kids and then back to the career as I should (statistically) live well into my 90s.
This however is unlikely at the moment as I lack a boyfriend. Hell, I even lack a crush. It's hard to envisage early marriage and kids (before I'm 30!) when I don't even fancy anyone from afar let alone have real prospects.
Ah, yes, the sad moaning singleton. I'm a living, breathing cliche. And pass me the Ben and Jerrys, please.
She speaks uncompromisingly about her possible infertility. Read it. My synoposis will do her no favours! I can't comment at her site so I'm commenting here....
Sinead mentions 2 things that I want to note -
1. The Chlamydia problem. It's real. It's serious and noone's talking about it. We've ads about "it only takes 1 sperm" but nothing about this very serious health risk to young women especially. I posted a while back on new research about teenage sex and depression - as a society we must examine what exactly we want teenagers to be doing. (well what message we want to send anyway) Chlamydia is a disease that can affect any age but there is a proven increased risk related to early onset of sexual activity.
2. IVF.
It doesn't always work - it fails 75% of the time.
I'm not going to go on about its expense etc. Martina Devlin has written loads about the emotional expense.
While there are many women who will be infertile due to disease or medical treatment, there are many more who have unexplained infertility that is linked to nothing. I read some woman recently (no idea where - probably a Sunday paper) giving out about fertility specialists "scaremongering" about the ideal age to get pregnant (early 20s) and 2006 should be a year free from such bullying.
That's rubbish. Anne Crittenden's "The Price of Motherhood" paints a picture of an IVF clinic waiting room where 40 something women are hoping desperately for the final thing-to-do to materialise. This is the reality of modern life.
There has to be sensible middle road somewhere - I don't know what exactly and most of these great sociological ideas are pretty hard to put into action. For example I do like the idea of an early-ish marriage followed by time off for kids and then back to the career as I should (statistically) live well into my 90s.
This however is unlikely at the moment as I lack a boyfriend. Hell, I even lack a crush. It's hard to envisage early marriage and kids (before I'm 30!) when I don't even fancy anyone from afar let alone have real prospects.
Ah, yes, the sad moaning singleton. I'm a living, breathing cliche. And pass me the Ben and Jerrys, please.
posted by Auds | 21:41
3 Comments:
Auds, thanks for the kind words, it's a piece I've been threatening to write for an absolute age.
I'm currently working through some of the glitches so you can now comment over at the new blog (please do - you'll be my first commenter!)
Won't agree with you on the early marriage thing. Simply experiencing how I and my friends and acquaintances have matured and developed as people from age 21 to age 27/28 has me convinced that people who get married before their mid-20s are either foolish or intellectually challenged.
I don't think getting married before 25 is for me (given that the requisite bits and pieces have yet to fall into place), but I know a few people in the last few years that have gotten married at 24, 25 years - I don't see any problem with it as they're mature and it's what they want.
People mature at different times (a point that Sinead raised her in article) and want different things at different times. Getting married younger than 30 is a good idea in my mind, theoretically anyway.
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