Hi Cats  I think that's a great idea about book reviews. I've read dozens of books on infertility, some of them not great and some which I found to be really helpful.  My own personal thing was that I didn't want to be reading books that always had a 'happy ending', you know?  I'm sure there are plenty of people who feel inspired by that but, for me, I preferred books that dealt with the reality of ongoing failure to conceive - or at least that had some stories of couples who came to terms with their failure to conceive and were able to survive it and move on, mixed in with the stories of Jane and Joe who now have a healthy baby boy!! or whatever.

Here are some books that I found really helpful.

Conquering Infertility: Dr Alice Domar's Mind/Body Guide to Enhancing Fertility and Coping with Infertility

This book is a useful guide to coping with infertility and gives tools and tricks for how to cope with stressful situations, treatment, failure, pregnancy announcements, insensitive comments.  I found it really helpful!  It also has plenty of stories about couples who went through infertility and survived (as I said above, for me this was key) whatever their outcome - some through pregnancy, some through adoption and others through moving on to live childfree.

There are chapters intitled Infertility, Stress and Depression; A Toolbox full of Coping Skills; Coping when Everybody but you has a Baby; You and your Husband; Turning to Family and Friends for Support; Infertility and your Career; and more.

Unsung Lullabies: Understanding and Coping with Infertility - Janet Jaffe, Martha Ourieff Diamond, David J. Diamond

This book looks at why the pain of infertility is so bad.  That was one thing that bowled me over was - I had always thought it would be horrendous to find I was infertile but I had no idea just how bad it could be and how worthless I would feel.  This book looks at the expectations most of us build from a very young age and how our life plan is mapped out at an unconscious level.   Quite a lot of it is based around your 'Reproductive Story', that is, the plans you had in your mind that are now being thwarted.  It also deals with the lack of pregnancy, something that I think society doesn't acknowledge.  From my experience, many people understand that miscarriage is a loss, but very few think that failure to conceive in the first place (or failed fertility treatment) is also a loss that must be grieved.

This book helped me understand why it was so intensely painful and what I might do to change my fundemental expectations of my life.

Chapters include This Isn't How It Was Supposed To Be; Your Reproductive Story; The Losses of Infertility; How Can I be an Adult if I Don't Become a Parent?; If Everyone Else Can Do This, Why Can't I?; Men Have Feelings Too; Relationships Under Fire; Grieving For the Pregnancy or Baby That Never Was; Dealing with the World; Knowing when to Stop Trying; Rewriting your Reproductive Story; Parenting after Inferility.

I hope that helps someone!

hi all,

i havent read many books but this seems like a great idea to weed out all the not so good ones and like caitriona i too dont really want to be reading about happy endings all the time, answers and possible solutions is really what i'm looking for in books.  And thank god for Amazon and the web because it just makes it so much easier to pick what it is you are looking for without having to stand in a book shop and hope you dont meet someone you know while paying for your infertility books!!

Also another suggestion, i havent been to a meeting in a while but i do remember someone bringing in a load of books they had read and passing them on to other couples, so if you have finished with any books bring them along, someone may appreciate it and it may help to cut down on some of the never ending cost involved in trying to concieve!!!

Happy reading all, talk soon.

s