The Choice Mom Guide to Fertility

Perhaps the most common frustration expressed on the Choice Mom discussion board is the single woman who, in hindsight, wished she had started earlier to explore and use her own fertility. We tend to presume that if we have regular periods, are in good health, and are paying for costly insemination attempts with a doctor that conception will happen easily.

To help single women make sense of their fertility when they don't have a partner to magically impregnate them, but who are instead trying to time often costly insemination attempts, the 100-page "Choice Mom Guide to Fertility" was written and published in 2007. Thanks to new sponsorship by California Cryobank, a full-service sperm bank; European Sperm Bank; and Sepal Reproductive Devices, makers of OVUSponse and OVU Proof ovulation predictors, we are happy to make this book available online for free for the month of July, as part of our "Focus on Fertility" month. (If you're interested in holding the book in your hands, we're still offering it for $15.95 on Amazon (when I get back from hiatus on August 10).

Section 1
What to Expect When You Want to Be Expecting: more than 15 fertility specialists discuss assessing egg quality, treatment options, ovulation detection, fertility challenges and myths.

Section 2
Educating Yourself, in order to choose doctors wisely, select a sperm bank and donor, negotiate with a known donor, find low-cost options, try at-home insemination. (Note that much of this information will become available in the new At-Home Insemination and Donor Conception sections.)

Section 3:
Dealing With the Emotions, of coping with fertility treatment and the two-week wait, including stress reduction tips from Alice Domar and eastern medicine insight from Angela Wu

Resources: glossary, lab tests, resources

Special thanks to the busy fertility specialists, named and unnamed, who gave us so much of their time and insight, particularly those who also reviewed parts of the book, as well as to the sponsors who have helped ChoiceMoms.org make it possible to bring educational and community-building resources to single women who are proactively contemplating, researching and pursuing motherhood on their own.