Infertility & Adoption Podcast

We interrupt our usually scheduled complaining for a public service announcement.

My job affords me plenty of time to listen to the radio on my headphones. It's great, actually. I love multi-tasking and being able to learn about something that's actually, you know, interesting when I'm facing an entire afternoon of what is really glorified data entry. (Click... type. Click... type. And repeat.) I started, as so many of us do, with the usual web-radio suspects: Pandora, Spotify, NPR, PRI. But when the news cycle kept repeating itself, the Glee covers of Journey and Madonna were getting old, and I realized that there really was a finite supply of episodes of This American Life, I started to branch out into more specialized topics. When I was first diagnosed with infertility, I decided to see if there was an infertility-centered radio program that I could discreetly listen to at work. I am proud to recommend to you:

Creating a Family Radio Show

I started listening to this a few days after returning to work post-surgery in the fall. I was ripping through episodes at a rate of 4-5 per day, learning about infertility and adoption even when I wasn't obsessively searching through PubMed or the blogosphere. My husband pointed out that this might not be the absolute healthiest use of my time (I was thinking about infertility 24/7, including in my dreams), and for a while I gave it up, but during my IVF cycle I started listening again. Not every episode is helpful or applicable to my situation and interests, but many are: endometriosis, what to do with frozen embryos, how many blastocysts to transfer. And others provide a fascinating look at things I had never thought about: a panel of birth moms talking about how they chose their child's adoptive families, fertility tourism, breastfeeding through adoption or surrogacy. Mel from Stirrup Queens has even been interviewed about the importance of IF blogging! Because I listened to this podcast series, I felt really secure in our decisions about eSET and freezing our embryos. And there have been more than a few shows where I've been moved to tears, particularly while listening to the various therapists who come on and describe coping strategies for women going through infertility treatment. Be aware that the audio quality is pretty low, and there are occasionally little glitches that you might not hear in a more professional production, but that's all part of the charm.

So anyway. I could totally write another post on how this whole nausea thing is getting old, and fast, but that can wait for a little longer. Are there any other radio shows about infertility/IVF/related topics that I should be listening to while I'm sitting at my desk and breathing deeply?