Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Sun. 5/7 in NYC: AFA Nat'l Fertility & Adoption Conference

http://www.theafa.org/newsletter/AFA_f_agenda.html

If anyone plans to be at the American Fertility Association annual conference this Sunday feel free to try to find me to say hello. The above link is to the conference agenda.

http://www.theafa.org/newsletter/AFA_f_works.html

Session One apparently has a Donor Egg seminar but nothing about Donor Sperm which is disappointing. I'll probably be at the "It's in the Male Part 1" overview of MFI issues during this session unless I am making noise at the DE session.

Session Two unfortunately has two sessions of which I had hoped to be at both: (a) Third party Reproduction and (b) For Men Only. I expect to try to make some noise at both of these sessions and expect to split my time between them both.

I am staying for only the morning as I promised to be home in the afternoon. Ssssion Three starting at 2:15 appears to have two sessions which men may be interested in. Neither addresses DI though directly by name: (a) Eval and Treatment for men and women and (b) Its in the Male Part 2.

Overall I am not thrilled that DI is not more closely addressed am I am hoping the Men Only session in the morning is MFI focused as opposed to men helping their wives (although this VERY VERY is important). We shall see.

Again if you find me and want to say hello please do. I had hoped to wriggle my way onto a panel but that did not happen so I am there hopefully advocating for DI Dad related issues. Hopefully I will not sound like a crank.

4 comments:

DI_Dad said...

One of my issue is pre-DI counseling. I was a member of the AFA and attended all the seminars etc but saw and received little advice to have counseling regarding all the possible issues surrounding DI (identity, donor helath screening, etc). THe whole focus in the infertility industry is making the child to cure the pain that we all feel dealing with infertility. I am not discounting that pain as I felt it for 8 years before our first was born.

Little attention is spent on what raising a DI person might involve years later. The therapist we did see gave us suggested books to read on the topic but we never really discussed the issues the child/adult would face. We briefly discussed disclosure issues but we got off that topic fast as both my wife and I were already in the openess camp.

I am also surprised why little attention is paid by these infertility group to DI but DE appears to get more attention. Maybe that's fair as generally DE seems to be more ignored in the general DC community which is a shame to begin with.

Maybe crank was too strong a word but I seem to notice that as I get older asking questions at these things is easier and I have dominated a Q&A here and there where I did not mean to.

DI_Dad said...

Thanks for the compliments!

And as far as how the kids will feel. They will love you guys as any other kids do. To them the social is all there is. Later on when they start learning more about how families work then they'll start to get an idea what "blood" relationships are and by that point they will be so fully bonded that daddy is daddy that odds are they would never hate you even if they start wanting to know something about the donor (that's if you share with them how they were conceived).

Eric

Julia said...

I attended the AFA conference on Sunday and you are right, there was little mention of DI. There may have been some in the FLying Solo session for singles, but I didn't attend.

I didn't attend with my DI hat on but rather was intent on discovering how I wanted to grow my family and attended mostly Adoption sessions after multiple failed IVF and Miscariages using my own "old" eggs and DI

Julia said...

I attended the AFA conference on Sunday and you are right, there was little mention of DI. There may have been some in the Flying Solo session for singles, but I didn't attend.

I didn't attend with my DI hat on but rather was intent on discovering how I wanted to grow my family and attended mostly Adoption sessions after multiple failed IVF and Miscariages using my own "old" eggs and DI