Helping the Stork: The Choices and Challenges of Donor Insemination, by Carol Frost Vercollone   [Paperback⋅1st Edition 1997]

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Rave Reviews (8)*

• 1) The best book on Donor Insemination to date!!!

  by Anonymous on November 12 1998
    70+ helpful votes

  If there was only one thing I could say about the book Helping the Stork it would be "Why did it take so long for this book to be written?" Carol Frost Vercollone and Heidi and Robert Moss have written an excellent guide for those thinking about using donor insemination to build their families, and also for those who already have their famlies through DI. This book was written for others to explore the issues surrounding donor insemination and to help them come to their own decisions about this common but not openly talked about form of family building. The added bonus is that it is also written for families, friends and health professionals to help in their understanding of the concerns and the issues that DI families face. The authors, from their own personal experience with DI and through counselling others want to provide reassurance that DI can be a wonderfully positive way to build families. This book has an easy to read style and is filled with numerous personal anecdotes from others who have either gone through DI or have some knowledge of it. I felt this was the best part of the book, the connection with others, their advice, fears, thoughts and honesty which can only come from people directly involved with this process. For those of you thinking you are alone in using DI, this book can certainly offer some comfort in the personal stories of others and the authors obvious intimate knowledge of this topic. The book goes through the various steps of DI, the decision making, issues of privacey and disclosure, and how to go about initiating the DI process. The authors are careful to try to cover issues concerning all individuals who may be using DI, including married couples, lesbians and single women. Also valuable in the book is the resource list and the bibliography. I'd like to share this passage from the book which I felt was it's strongest message. "Our goal, both in writing this book and in our counselling, is to change social attitudes toward DI so much that if you do tell, you can feel more confident that your child will ultimately view this news positively, not negatively. It may never be OK that there was so little donor information provided or that your family began with such suffering for the parents, but you'll certainly get across just how wanted your child was." Helping the Stork has been a long awaited for book that will hopefully do just that.

• 2) A Support Group in a Book!

  by Peggy B. Kindler on November 16 1997
    30+ helpful votes

  Where has this book been? This book has everything you always wanted to know about DI but had no one to ask. Helping the Stork is truly a support group in a book. This book is as technical as necessary but it deals with the feelings involved in the DI process. This is a very warm book and easy to read. No matter what feelings you are having you will find them in this book. The authors recognize that DI is a physical and emotional journey toward parenthood. Why should you own this book? Because although this is the only DI book published in the 1990s, it is also an excellent book. These authors acknowledge that DI is not just for married couples. There is a section on Becoming a Mom Without a Dad, Becoming a Single Mom Through DI, Lesbian Couples Creating Families through DI, and a section on Celebrating Differences. Other sections I think are wonderful include: Putting Together Your Medical Team, Emotional Needs At That First Insemination, Two Methods of Insemination, When DI Memories Come to Mind, and Selecting on a Donor's Personal Statements. My favorite chapter was chapter 10 - Humor in Hindsight. The book quotes dialogue from Wendy Levy's zany film SWIM, SWIM...TALKING TO SPERM AND OTHER DESPERATE ACTS. "I start to take Clomiphene, a relatively mild fertility drug, and thankfully, I experience no side effects, except maybe locking my girlfriend in the closet once a week if she forgets to vacuum her hair off the bathroom floor. Okay, a few mood swings..." And, if you enjoy reading, which I am sure you do if you are an Amazon fan, this book is worth the price just for the bibliography included in the end of the book.

• 3) Great book for anyone considering DI

  by Jen on March 02 2000
    20+ helpful votes

  Having a child is a decision that affects the rest of your life. When you turn to DI, there are many questions and dilemas to overcome before proceeding. This book does a wonderful job of discussing the challenges and emotional obstacles one should overcome before conceiving a DI child. Well done. A must read!

• 4) A Godsend for us!

  by Anonymous on October 02 2002
    20+ helpful votes

  This book was an ENORMOUS help to my husband and me. I agree with some of the other reviewers that it is focused more on the emotional aspects and couples dealing with male infertility and may not be such a great help to single mothers and lesbian couples. But there ARE those of us out here in that category of couples with male factor infertility. My husband and I had already tried unsuccessfully to conceive through ICSI and could not afford more attempts. Donor insemination was our only other option besides adoption. This book focused on EXACTLY what we needed. What are the pros and cons, tell or don't tell others, tell or don't tell the child (I felt they were pro-telling, but discussed the positives and negatives of each choice), known donor or anonymous? These were some of the many issues we were concerned with. I didn't need a biology lesson to learn how it's done - I had other books on infertility to explain that. I didn't need a cost rundown - it varies so much, my clinic could answer those questions. After FOUR years of agonizing over whether or not to do this, this book FINALLY helped us make our decision and decide how we would handle all of the ensuing choices. I felt the authors did a great job of presenting all sides of the issue in an honest and fair way. I highly recommend it to other couples in our situation.

• 5) Thank good ness for this book!

  by Anonymous on June 03 2003
    10+ helpful votes

  This book was a wonderful tool for my husband and I when we were exploring DI as an option. This is the one book that truly addresses our unique infertility situation. None of the other infertility books spend more than a page talking about using donor sperm. This was wonderful!

• 6) The donor insemination bible

  by Anonymous on May 14 2001
    9+ helpful votes

  This book is the best for anyone considering using donor sperm to create their family. Most infertility books usually only have one chapter regarding donor insemination and then it's only to talk about the medical procedure. Helping the Stork has become my resource manual for using donor insemination.

• 7) A great book to help with the loss!

  by Shelly Matherrs, DI adoptee on October 31 2002
    6+ helpful votes

  I am a DI adoptee and I recommended this book to my mother. She really felt validated by the book. As an DI adoptee I also recommend "Adoption Forum" by Kasey Hamner. It covers DI from all angles. And those touched by DI are represented in many of the other topics. Oh, and remember, always disclose!!

• 8) Helped me feel less unique

  by Anonymous on October 14 2002
    4+ helpful votes

  I agree with other reviewers that this book focuses more on the emotional side than the technical. However, I can get all the technical information I need from my doctor. What this book gave me was a sense that there are a LOT of others out there who are doing what I'm doing. It also helped me focus on and deal with all the stress that the process brings with it. I think you can get a lot out of this book even if you are not the hetero couple that is more targeted by the examples. You still have to deal with the issues between you and the child and the donor, no matter what your relationship is, and those chapters were very helpful.