Infertility Book Recommendations
from Infertility Clinics
 

Some recommendations from RSC of the San Francisco Bay Area:

For Parents

1. Flight of the Stork: What Children Think and When about Sex and Family Building, by Anne C. Bernstein. A "must read" book. Focuses on how children's thinking develops. Explains how children organize and internalize information on sex and reproduction, at different stages of development. Includes insights about how children think about reproductive technology.
    
2. The Long-Awaited Stork: A Guide to Parenting After Infertility, by Ellen Sarasohn Glazer. Looks at the effect of parents' infertility as their children grow. An excellent chapter on the parents' experience of parenting after donor insemination and surrogacy.
    
3. Adopting After Infertility, by Patricia Irwin Johnston. While this book is about adoption, the author really understands the lifelong impact of infertility on raising a family.
    
4. Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child, by Holly van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb. Like Patricia Johnston, this author has a sensitive feel for the grief and loss issues related to infertility and parenting. She has several suggestions for handling the psychological aspects of discussing adoption that can be adapted for discussing third party reproduction.

For Children

1. How Babies and Families are Made: There is More Than One Way!, by Patricia Schaffer. Explains the facts of anatomy, conception and birth in a context that acknowledges a variety of ways in which families can be created, including donor insemination (doesn't mention donor egg or surrogacy).