Adding a Contemporary Twist to the Birds and Bees Tale

Courtesy photo Tim and Jessica Brandt with their children, Owen, left, and Connor, and the family dog, Ruby.

Meet someone wonderful, fall in love, get married, have babies. It's the same story the world over, right? Well, maybe not.

Most of us are here because we were conceived the old-fashioned way. But these days there are alternative methods of achieving pregnancy when Mother Nature doesn't cooperate. And, once a pregnancy has run its desired nine months, the birth and its immediate aftermath can be handled in a variety of ways.

Just in time for birthing season, two local authors' books take us on divergent paths to pregnancy and parenthood.

Laguna Beach High School grad Timothy Brandt tells of his and his wife Jessica's experiences in the world of in vitro fertilization in his recent book, "A Baby the Hard Way", written under the penname Timothy Edwards, and published this year by iUniverse.

Nadya Suleman, the Whittier woman who gave birth to octuplets, reignited debate over in vitro fertilization. But as this local couple found out, the process is grueling and frequently heart breaking. Even in Jessica's under-30 age group, there is only a one-in-three chance of ever achieving pregnancy.

To add to their difficulties, almost immediately upon finding out they would need IVF if they were to have their much-desired baby, Tim and Jessica moved to Japan for a three-year work stint.

Adoption was a fallback position, since they knew that IVF came with no guarantees. But they decided they would first try their luck and pursue in vitro.

Because of language difficulties, they discarded the idea of using a Japanese facility. Thus began their three-year journey towards parenthood, punctuated with a total of four arduous plane trips, 22 hours door to door, home to their California fertility clinic.

Each fertilization try is called a cycle, wherein several embryos are inserted in the uterus. Then there is a lot of finger crossing, hoping the embryo will firmly implant itself. For the Brandts, it took three cycles.

The stress was tremendous. Fortunately, as Tim describes in his book, he and Jessica drew closer, rather than drifting apart, perhaps aided by their distance from the support of family and friends. They were certainly aided by their ability to keep a grip on their senses of humor, however tenuous that grip became, at times.

Oddly enough, very soon after they returned permanently to the U.S., they got the welcome news that they were pregnant. They are now parents of three children, all the result of in vitro fertilization. Tim wrote the book to alert other couples facing infertility to what their lives would be like during the IVF process.

Euro Baby Care

Once a pregnancy is achieved, by old methods or new, the birthing of the baby is much the same wherever you are, right? How different can it be?

Very different, as it turns out.

Laguna Beach resident Gea Meijering has given birth to a baby in the Netherlands and in the U.S. The great difference between the two births prompted her to translate, edit and publish "The First 8 Days of Being a Mom," iCare Press, 2009.

Meijering's first baby, born in the Netherlands, was a natural birth, since Cesarean sections, and epidural anesthetics are used in much of Europe only in cases of danger to the mother or child.

Since she and her baby were both doing well, they went home the next day. During the first week home with her newborn son, she had the assistance of a 9-to-5 practical baby nurse, covered by state health insurance.

Clearly, this is another point of difference compared with birth methods in the U.S.

Current U.S. practice is to send new mothers and their babies home after, usually, a two-night hospital stay. With today's farflung families, a new mother can face a huge responsibility with perhaps little support.

Meijering's book, based on an original compiled by a team of Dutch neonatal specialists, helped her so much she decided to adapt it to U.S. practices. Simply and clearly written, the book guides the new mother through the intense first week at home with her infant.

Fresh perspective is always valuable. Today, with long overdue reforms to healthcare on the horizon, this book raises questions anew about support for new mothers.

In Canada, 40 years since the introduction of state-financed health care, the infant mortality rate is 4.8 per 1,000 live births, while the U.S. rate stands at 6.3 per 1,000.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

Both books are available from amazon.com. A copy of each is also in the holdings at the Susi Q Library, on Third Street here in Laguna

Dinah Shields in a bookindustry lifer. She is owner of Bespoke Libraries, a Lagunabased private library service. www.bespokelibrariesca.com.