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Infertility in the 1960s, Horrors and Miracles: My Personal Story

I was a teenager in the middle of the last century. Those were the days before support groups. Sensitivity to other people’s problems didn’t seem to be top of mind. And personal matters were mostly kept hidden. As you read through this story, you will come across many cases of insensitivity that, fortunately, are mostly unknown today.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the role of women in our country began to change. The discovery of the contraceptive pill allowed many women to postpone childbearing in order to build a career. The feeling of empowerment over their bodies prompted many of them to make their voices heard in a rapidly changing society.

In late 1963, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy first shocked and then energized men and women of my generation to jump headlong into changing the world. As the Vietnam War raged through the 1960s, men and women protested loud enough to overthrow President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

With the new empowerment of women, many rejected traditional marriage in favor of establishing communes where men and women could live a “free love” lifestyle. (I recently met a man who was born in a commune and had no idea who his dad was!)

It was during these rapidly changing times that I, an undergraduate student at Stern College for Women, took my place in the world as a young married woman. I was 19 years old! My husband, Hershie, 22, was a graduate student at Yeshiva University. We lived in the neighborhood of Manhattan called Washington Heights.

Our world is the Orthodox Jewish World. In the 1960s, neither women’s liberation nor building a significant career was on my agenda. I wanted my voice to be heard, but I wanted to do it in the context of my Orthodox Jewish life. Having children was at the top of my list!

At the age of 21 I discovered that I had an infertility problem. Today it is called PCOS. Regular OB/GYNs in the ’60s weren’t used to dealing with the new field of “infertility” so they suggested I see the doctor who delivered Jackie Kennedy’s babies…a doctor! for the rich! I timidly arrived at my appointment during which I was totally amazed by the presence of the doctor who had treated the First Lady!

Jackie’s doctor suggested that I have a major surgical procedure called a wedge resection. They would cut a wedge of cysts from both ovaries to create a clean surface for new eggs to emerge. I was horrified! The idea of ​​surgery terrified me.

I stopped thinking about surgery when we graduated and returned to our hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I started teaching kindergarten at Hillel Academy and spent a lot of time “doctoring”.

I underwent all the tests that were available in those days… the ones I remember were called Hysterosalpingography and Coldscopy. Birth control pills began to be used for infertility patients, but researchers had no experience in regulating the estrogen and progesterone levels in the pills, and I became seriously ill after taking just one pill.

Each month brought disappointment. Ovulation was measured daily by taking body temperature. Pregnancy could only be determined by blood tests. There were no rapid pregnancy or ovulation tests in those days. Waiting for the results of those tests was excruciating and ultimately devastating.

Seeing pregnant women was a nightmare. And sometimes the women made insensitive comments about how she hadn’t had a child yet. One of my doctors asked, “Why do you bother with all these tests etc, you’re never going to have a child?” After such incidents, she would run home crying. Even today, 45 years later, that comment still stings!

Knowing that G-d has a plan for everyone, I never asked, “Why me?” but, except for the time I spent teaching, I felt very sad and empty. It took my doctors 2 more years to mention wedge resection surgery. At that time I was 24 years old and ready for surgery.

Truth be told, this surgery saved my life. One of my ovaries was so loaded with cysts that they had to remove it completely. The Dr. said that he could have twisted in any direction, at any time, from the weight of the cysts, which could have cut off my circulation! But for me, an infertility patient, the worst news was that the other ovary was also so polycystic that the doctor was only able to save 1/5 of that ovary. I had surgery to be able to have children and I came out with 1/5 of an ovary! My mom heard the news first and was in shock even though the doctor assured her that a woman can conceive even with only a small part of an ovary.

Another year passed and nothing happened. He was beginning to feel desperate. Without support groups, there was nowhere to seek comfort from others who were experiencing the same pain. And I was surrounded by babies, babies, babies!

At dawn in 1966, an amazing thing happened. A well-known fertility doctor from Wales took up a position at Pittsburgh’s Magee Hospital…the late Dr. David Charles. At that time, Magee, a teaching hospital, was beginning to develop a world-class Fertility Department. The moment I walked into his office, I felt his warmth and optimism. He especially encouraged me when, after examining me, he said, “Miss, you WILL have a baby!”

Who would have guessed that Dr. Charles was one of 12 doctors in the US conducting clinical trials on a newly discovered drug called Clomephene? (Today it’s called Clomid…which, to my knowledge, has made wedge resection surgeries extinct.) Dr. Charles determined that I was a good candidate for success with Clomephene and asked if my husband and I would agree to the opportunity. of multiple births. That question was a no-brainer!

In December 1966 I got pregnant! The first seven months of my pregnancy were happily uneventful. During my 30 week, I got out of bed in the morning, looked down, and saw blood on the floor. My mind could barely understand what I saw.

When I got to the hospital, I was already in labor with suspected placenta previa! There were no ultrasounds in those days, so I was prepped for a C-section before Dr. Charles, in front of about 25 medical students, examined me to determine for sure if his suspicion was correct.

Yes, it was a placenta previa, but Dr. Charles determined that there was enough room for my little baby to fit through. The next step was to try to stop the labor. I was immediately hooked up to alcohol intravenously.

The wait began. As I was the first placenta previa in the Clomephene clinical trials, I instantly became a statistic! But my work would not stop. As I was being wheeled into the delivery room (there were no delivery rooms in 1966!), a resident doctor stopped the gurney and announced that he wanted to try to determine the size of my baby. The resident proceeded to produce and push my abdomen. (Remember, there were no sonograms in those days!) He Callously Declared that from the size I could feel, my baby only had a 50-50 chance of living!

Actually? Oh really? Are you kidding? Am I not already under enough stress? If she had had the big mouth that I have today, what I would have said to her would be printable!

The delivery room was equipped with an incubator and a pediatrician. The team was ready.

A short time later, my little son glides (literally) out into the world. He weighed 3 pounds 1 oz. It was June 20, 1967. When Dr. Charles pulled it out, I squeezed my eyes shut. Dr. Charles insisted that he look at my baby. I told him that if, God forbid, the baby doesn’t survive, I couldn’t bear to spend my whole life with an image of him in my mind. Dr. Charles insisted that he open his eyes…and since, once again, this was many years before he developed my big mouth, I looked down at the baby. What I saw was terrifying. He was so small. How could he survive him? He was traumatized.

The baby in the incubator was instantly taken to the NICU and I was wheeled into the recovery room.

The following thing that happened would absolutely NOT happen today: In the recovery room a nurse came in, announced that she was giving me a shot to make sure I wouldn’t produce milk. He was too shaken up by the day’s events to even assess what he was saying. Even though breastfeeding and expressing milk were discouraged at the time and taking her to the hospital was totally unheard of, I fully intended to breastfeed my baby. With that injection, all hope of breastfeeding was dashed.

In the late 1960s, no family member was allowed to touch their premature baby in the incubator. Day after day, we would stand in front of the glass window of the preemie ward watching our tiny baby being fed through a feeding tube and connected to what seemed like millions of tubes and wires. Believe it or not, I was afraid to take pictures of him in the incubator because I was afraid the camera flash would affect his eyes!

After 2 long and harrowing months, our baby boy tipped the scales at 5 pounds, 8 ounces. That was the casting weight. The day before he was released, I was invited to the nursery to hold and feed my baby for the first time. It was surreal. My baby was 2 months old and this was my first physical contact with him. When I think about it now, he might cry.

2015 update: Our little preemie is almost 47 years old and has a PhD in molecular genetics! He is the father of two teenage girls and loves to joke with me that whatever emotional issues he has… stems from the fact that he wasn’t touched until he was 2 months old! Laughingly, I appreciate the guilt, but I still feel bad as I wonder what the medical community might have been thinking in those days. Better not insist on it.

Over the next ten years, Hershie and I were blessed with 3 more sons and a daughter! Child #2 was also a “Clomid” baby. The joke after that was that we had finally found the “on” button… without the aid of drugs!

Hershie and I thank G-d every day for the amazing blessings he has given us!

Children! grandchildren! During the 1960s, could we have imagined such blessings?

We pray that all of you will be recipients of these same wonderful Blessings!

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