Mother-Talk Book Review

The Fertility Journal by Kim Hahn (founder and CEO of Conceive Magazine was a pleasure to review. I have a wonderful friend who is dealing with fertility issues at the moment and I wanted to review this so that I could share it with her. I talked with her about the book and we looked through it together. The book is a real hard cover journal type book that would be a lovely gift for a woman in your life who announces she is going to start trying.(um- 8 months average- did you know?) She said it looked like something she would really be into at this point in her life(at the one year mark of trying and being able to have doctor info in one place and not an old ratty notebook). The beginning of the journal is quite no nonsense and takes the approach of teaching you all about your fertility as if you are clueless. Well, often we are clueless as women right? We think we will stop worrying about getting pregnant and then just get pregnant when we announce it to the world or abandon birth control. We often fail to recognize the purely scientific and wondrous workings of our bodies. This journal, although it may annoy some with it's matter of fact lessons, I am sure they will be impressed with the overall product design.

The book and it's design with two parts (one for "Trying to Conceive" and one for "Fertility Treatments") has covered most topics that my friend has been dealing with or thinking about as a woman trying to become pregnant for over a year.. The first part is broken down into 12 monthly sections and has basic and necessary information with a small box for each day where you can write down your cycle day, medications, vitamins, and your BBT and other facts. She liked the tracking and journaling space provided. In the latter half of the book we thought that the sections for IVF could be longer and have more spaces as most of the friends we know took more than two treatments to become pregnant or cease treatment. It felt that the latter half of the book was strongly assuming that the next step for all women was IVF. My friend is exploring acupuncture and other alternative methods as she is healthy and so is her husband and it is just taking longer than expected. She did not talk much about the IVF treatments section as I think that she feels like this is the final frontier to most women in this situation. Many women might not be able to afford to pay the high costs of or even those who might not want to "pay" the emotional costs of IVF treatments may find this section of the book hard to read.

This journal is full of great knowledge and is presented in a modern and smart way. I will be giving this as a gift to friends and I know that any woman could benefit from information in this journal. The great thing about this book is it is the real deal and does not sugar coat the facts of life. It announces that getting pregnant is not simple for all woman and it should be looked at as a type of health and knowledge mission. This author is true to science and reality as the book urges you to think and unlike other books on the market, it will arm you with facts and not just the hope.I think that perhaps the publishers might want to think about a companion journal for the women struggling with infertility longer than a year and explore deeper the issues they face. I think this author would be able to talk frankly and yet with compassion and insight to women. My friend is using The Fertility Journal daily now and loves it. Check out Mother-Talk for more reviews!!!
Thanks Mother-talk!!!