Actually, I know I've worked with families using assisted reproduction since I was a young teenager; one of the families I babysat for then was a single lesbian mom who eventually had 6 children, 4 or 5 by birth and 1 or 2 by adoption. The ART she used was pretty low-tech as far as I know.
I learned a lot about how modern ART works, what the options and possibilities are, and what some of the pitfalls and challenges may be.
Favorite quote: "Urologists . . . have refined microsurgery to the point where if a man has a pocket of motile sperm anywhere - if, for example, the majority of his sperm are dead but there is live sperm in one tubule - they can retrieve it and use it. They're like the SWAT team of reproductive surgeons, trained to get the hostage out safely. (In military hospitals, these are actually called 'commando extractions.'" (p. 74)
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So today, I was contacted by a potential mother considering using ART and looking for a doula to provide prenatal, birth, and postpartum support because going it alone (no partner) is really scary. I won't be able to work with this mama-to-be (she's not pregnant yet) but it was very useful to have read this book and have the basic understanding of what she was talking about in my back pocket, so to speak!
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