Labor Day at Dominion

Labor Day is not a real funny holiday for fertility patients. It is really an obstetrical holiday and having worked a fair number of Labor Days during my residency everyone thought that it was so clever to quip about being in labor on Labor Day…yup, a real yuck fest.

Of course, for REs the funny holiday is Easter. Not for the religious significance but of course, for all the Easter egg jokes. Same phenomenon of really bad jokes occurs as patients who undergo egg collection on Easter are participating in an “egg hunt” of sorts.

Hey, I don’t make this stuff up, I just pass it on..you know, life is not like an episode of Scrubs.

So back to our introductory questions on infertility. Clearly infertility is a common disorder as you can read below. In the Gordon household we did not deal with infertility per se, but had the emotional distress of dealing with recurrent pregnancy loss instead. My 16 year old son Seth wished we had infertility. When we announced that we were pregnant, Seth looked at me and asked quite seriously: “Dad, how did this happen?” I replied “What do you mean?” Seth, at that time age 12, fired back “I mean did you take Mom to your office or what?” “No," I replied, "this was the old-fashioned way.” And that was way too much information and Seth wanted to hear not another word on the subject of his parents procreative activity.

Without further ado, here is the Question of the Day:


3. How common is infertility?


Infertility is an extraordinarily common disorder. An estimated 25% of all women will experience an episode of infertility during their lifetime. Infertility currently affects about 6.1 million women and their partners in the United States. The percentage of reproductive-age women who report problems successfully conceiving and delivering a pregnancy varies with age. In the youngest segment of the population, approximately 10% to 15% are affected by this problem. Among women older than age 35, however, more than one-third report diminished fertility. The rates of pregnancy loss are also related to a woman’s age, with the rate of miscarriage exceeding 50% in women older than age 40.