Long Road to Parenthood

"I know it's bizarre," says my neighbor Lisa Rosenthal, as we walk her dog Aslan early one morning. "But there were times when I was trying to conceive that I was willing to give up an arm, my sight, my family" – she went as far as to tell her husband she'd end the marriage, if he wanted children with someone else. "I did a lot of crying, I didn't go to baby showers, I didn't talk to friends. There's a lot of denial, and shame, and embarrassment about infertility – it attacks your sense of self, your identity. It's not a club you want to belong to."
I've known Lisa for 16 years, ever since she and her husband, Bill Kahan, moved in down the street, and their kids – yes – became friends with our kids. But we've never talked in depth about the problems they had getting pregnant, because, well, the subject's extraordinary personal – and for years a non-issue, since Lisa gave birth to three healthy girls (the youngest now 12). Only...it's not a non-issue for Lisa, and never will be, because overcoming infertility has become part of her life mission (as is evident from even a casual reading of her "Path to Fertility" blog).
Lisa officially works in "communications" for Reproductive Medicine Associates of Connecticut (RMACT), which has offices in Danbury, Cos Cob and Norwalk, and also across the border in New York state. But she does as much counseling, and encouraging, and educating, as communication, because Lisa has "been there" – six and a half long years, starting at age 25, trying unsuccessfully to have children. Her fertility story ended well, but the journey included obstacles and procedures of every kind, from in vitro fertilization to intrauterine insemination, from changing doctors to changing diets, from fertility drugs to Synthroid. Overcoming infertility, she says, "is not for the faint-hearted."
Although nearly half of infertility cases can be traced to the male partner, the would-be mother, as the baby-carrier, bears most of the burdens, physical as well as emotional and psychological. "We do have a biological clock," says Lisa, "and it ticks strongly. Women are born with every single egg they'll ever have," which translates into female fertility starting to decline surprisingly early – by the age of 25. Advanced maternal age, multiple sexual partners, and sexually transmitted diseases can also "wreak havoc" with the reproductive system, she notes – one reason reproductive medicine has begun to stress "fertility preservation." As a parent and former grade-school teacher, she wants young adults, particularly women, to have a positive agenda about their bodies, not to think of their physical selves as constantly under attack by germs, unwanted pregnancies, and other outside forces (and also keeping in mind that pregnancy, at some point, may be much desired). "We need teachers and parents to talk to their children and teenagers about how delicate their reproductive system is," she says, "so our children can have babies when they want to. It's shocking, after years of avoiding pregnancy, to discover you can't become pregnant when you decide to."
Lisa is somewhat reluctant to tell her own story – "I'm really 'outing' myself here, you know that?" – because it's not typical. Not only was her infertility "idiopathic" – without identifiable cause – but resolved itself without specific medical treatment. She did "what the doctor ordered" for many years, often taking "time off" due to frustration, and recalls, half-jokingly, once "threatening to kill the doctor, after he'd said for the tenth time that the eggs were beautiful, the hormone levels were where they should be." There were no diagnosed physical problems, with either her plumbing or Bill's, yet the miracle of conception just wasn't happening. "We didn't go on vacations, we saved up money for procedures that didn't work, we came to terms with leading a child-free life," she says. "My biggest regret is that I stayed with my OB/GYN too long. I went to him for a year, got attached, poured my heart out. But I should have been seeing a board-certified reproductive endocrinologist," because fertility science, then as now, is a moving target. Although she notes the "bag of treatments is not huge," pregnancy rates at reputable fertility clinics have increased significantly over the last 20 years, from 25 percent to well above 40 percent, depending on the woman's age and diagnosis.
Her first pregnancy came soon after she started practicing yoga, and taking a synthetic hormone to treat an underactive thyroid gland. Was there a direct cause-and-effect? Hard to say... but Lisa is now a registered yoga instructor and teaches "Fertile Yoga" classes (which she designed) at Yoga Space, on Federal Road near Four Corners, and also in Norwalk. Stress doesn't cause infertility, Lisa notes, but infertility can cause stress... and yoga can help people "release the tension, fear, anger and depression" that often accompanies the failure to conceive. The classes are underwritten by RMACT, are free to the public, and open to anyone who's interested in a gentle, low-key yoga class.
"I speak to a lot of women about infertility," Lisa says, "and some of them don't talk to anyone about this. No one wants to make an appointment with our clinic, to join the club." But it is a club, fortunately, many couples leave, and from which, Lisa notes, a valuable lesson can be drawn – that "perhaps we can have everything we want in our lives... just not when we want it." And for whatever we do receive, we should be – as any yoga practitioner will tell you – grateful.