Your Health: Infertility  has unique challenges

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By Dr. Krystene DiPaola 4:13 PM Tuesday, April 26, 2011

As an infertility specialist at UC Health’s Center for Reproductive Health, I devote my entire practice to helping women who have encountered hurdles along the road to motherhood. I was drawn to the practice of reproductive medicine so that I might bring my perspective as a woman to bear on the unique challenges that infertility presents to patients; my passion is seeing women through the emotional roller coaster ride that can accompany infertility.

Since we are in the midst of celebrating National Infertility Awareness Week (April 24-30), my role here is to get you thinking about the following.

What does it mean to be a woman? Have you ever asked yourself this question? Of course, I couldn’t possibly give this question its due in such a short space, but I thought I’d start off by asking you to contemplate this for yourself.

For many, the concept of womanhood is so intertwined with the essence of motherhood that it is impossible to consider one without the other.

I don’t think I fully understood that for some women, the two concepts of motherhood and womanhood could be so inseparable until I felt the yearning to be a mother myself. If you’ve ever had the feeling, you know what I mean. It’s nearly indescribable. It’s a feeling that is stronger than anything you’ve ever felt, one to which you are instinctively called and that changes you forever.

Such a strong feeling, however, is not without its price. While many women answer the call to motherhood without incident, a certain number find their journey a challenging one. In such cases, the strength of the call and the entanglement with their sense of womanhood acts as a double-edged sword. Yearning compounds with frustration and can snowball into an emotionally charged drain. For some, experiencing infertility feels like an attack on their womanhood, a feeling to which I am deeply sympathetic.

While our center is the epicenter of high tech medicine and the latest research — directly connected to the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine — and we bring the most advanced biotechnologies to the practice, there is a line at which technology leaves off and compassion takes over. Our practice straddles that line every day, because for us it’s what separates a lab exercise from a labor of love.

My goal is to combine high-tech medicine with a supportive and nurturing environment for my patients who are struggling to make motherhood a reality. For me, this is what being a woman is all about.

Krystene DiPaola, M

, sees patients at the UC Center for Reproductive Health in West Chester

Twp.

and Mt. Auburn.

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