--- author: TVO Today date: '2026-05-08' guest: '' layout: post.njk source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HsxiY2PQZE speaker: TVO Today tags: - fertility-journey - ivf - surrogacy - emotional-toll - access-to-care title: 记者艰难生育之旅：IVF、代孕与希望的重建 summary: 本访谈记录了记者凯瑟琳（Catherine）充满挑战的生育历程，包括试管婴儿（IVF）、多次流产、手术以及最终通过代孕迎来双胞胎的经历。内容深入探讨了IVF带来的身心负担、治疗的可及性问题、以及对人际关系的影响。凯瑟琳分享了她撰写《不孕不育》（Infertility）一书的初衷，并强调了管理期望、保持希望以及寻求支持的重要性，为经历相似旅程的人们提供了深刻的见解和慰藉。 insight: '' draft: true series: '' category: health-wellness area: life-family project: [] people: [] companies_orgs: [] products_models: [] media_books: - infertility status: evergreen --- ### 生育历程的开端与转折 **Catherine**: 我当初带着完全错误的心态开始试管婴儿（IVF）。我完全没有料到这对我的身体会带来如此大的伤害。 **Interviewer**: Catherine，感谢您今天邀请我们来到您的家中。能否请您简要地为我们描述一下您的生育历程？ **Catherine**: 我们的女儿 Sydney 是自然怀孕的，相对来说比较容易，孕期也很顺利。但当我想为她添个弟弟妹妹时，我们就遇到了麻烦，几乎是不可能的。我们经历了多次流产，做了子宫手术，最终转向了试管婴儿（IVF）。而这个过程绝非一帆风顺，持续了数年，涉及多次取卵、胚胎移植，最终转向了代孕。但幸运的是，我们最终走出了这一步，不仅为女儿 Sydney 迎来了一个弟弟，还迎来了两个孩子。我们最终有了两个男婴，出生时间相隔四个月，一个是通过代孕，另一个则是我意外怀孕的。
Original English **>>**: I went into IVF with the total wrong mindset. I had no idea the physical toll that this was going to take on me. **>>**: Catherine, thanks for having us to your home today. Briefly describe your fertility journey for us. **>>**: So our daughter Sydney was naturally conceived, relatively easy to make, straightforward pregnancy. Giving her a sibling is where we ran into trouble and it was near impossible. So we had multiple miscarriages, uterine surgeries ultimately turned to IVF and through that process was not straightforward whatsoever. And it was years long involved multiple retreat egg retrievals. Embryo transfers ultimately be turned to surrogacy. And in the end, we were very fortunate that we did come out the other side with not just one sibling for our daughter Sydney, but two. So we ended up with two baby boys born four months apart, one via surrogacy and the other unexpectedly via me.
### 《不孕不育》的创作动机与卢易丝·布朗的启示 **Interviewer**: 真棒。您为什么会想写一本名为《不孕不育》（Infertility）的书来记录这一切？ **Catherine**: 我是一名记者，一名调查记者。我做了差不多二十年的这类工作。所以，在我经历这场令人头晕目眩、完全沉浸其中的体验时，我会躺在诊疗台上，抬头望着诊所的天花板，心想，总有一天我要把这一切都写出来。我当时不知道具体会以何种形式呈现，但我对自己周围发生的事情、事情为何会是这样充满了疑问，我意识到我想写一本在我经历代孕时希望能读到的书。我希望它既是深刻个人的，也是深入调查的。所以，这本书既是我的回忆录，也是新闻报道。 **Interviewer**: 我对您采访了第一位试管婴儿，**卢易丝·布朗（Louise Brown）**，感到非常好奇。她的经历有什么令人之处？您从与她的谈话中学到了什么吗？ **Catherine**: 我觉得这很有趣，就像是时间的一个快照，或者说是一台时光机。她出生在 70 年代末的英国奥尔德姆。听到她谈论自己是如何得知她是世界上第一个试管婴儿（IVF baby）的，以及在她真正理解这件事时，它已经出现在教科书里，并在课堂上被传授。我觉得这真的很引人入胜。有一件事对我触动很大，也是我把它写进书里的原因——她提到她的父母被医生告知，她怀孕的几率只有“百万分之一”。很多人听到这个会觉得概率极低。但她的母亲听到的却是：“还有机会。” 所以我觉得这非常能说明一个极度渴望某件事的人的心态。
Original English **>>**: That's wonderful. Why did you want to write about this in your book called infertility? **>>**: So I'm a journalist, I'm an investigative reporter. I've been doing that kind of work for the better part of two decades. So while I was going through this head spinning, totally consuming experience, I would lie on the exam table and sort of look up at the clinic ceiling and think to myself, you know, one day I'm going to write about all of this. And I didn't know exactly what form it would take, but I just had so many questions about what was going on around me, why things were the way that they were, and I realised that I wanted to write the book that I wish I had when I was going through surrogacy. I wanted it to be deeply personal and deeply reported. So it's part memoir and part journalism. **>>**: I was really interested that you interviewed the first test tube baby, Louise Brown. What were her revelations? Did you get any revelations from anything you spoke to her about? **>>**: I just thought it was so interesting because it felt sort of like this snapshot in time or like a time machine, I guess, where she was born in the late 1970s in Oldham, in England. And just hearing her sort of talk about how she learned that she was sort of the world's first IVF baby, and the fact that sort of by the time she really understood it, she was already in textbooks and she was sort of being taught it in the classroom. I thought that was really interesting. And one thing that really resonated with me, and it's why I included it in the book, was she explained that her mother and her father had been told by doctors that, you know, they had a I think she said, you know, a 1 in 1,000,000 chance that she might be able to get pregnant. And many people would hear that as a very low probability. And what her mom heard was there's a chance. And so I thought that was just very indicative about the mindset of somebody who wants this so badly.
### 试管婴儿（IVF）的准入障碍 **Interviewer**: 准入如何影响一个人开始试管婴儿（IVF）治疗的能力？ **Catherine**: 我认为在谈论准入时，有几件事需要考虑。首先，我们应该谈论的是经济准入。试管婴儿（IVF）很昂贵，大概在 15,000 到 20,000 美元之间。可能少一点，也可能更多，这取决于药物、方案以及是否采用了任何额外的治疗。但它非常昂贵。而且，我认为人们也很重要的是要知道，它通常不会第一次就成功。所以那 2 万美元可能很快就会变成 4 万美元。如果你能负担得起并设法凑齐，它还会进一步增加。是的，有些省份和地区会提供一些资金来支持人们的生育之旅。但没有哪个省份或地区能完全资助。 另一件事我们应该谈论的是地理准入。我想人们会惊讶地发现，有些省份和地区根本没有一家进行取卵或胚胎移植这种复杂手术的试管婴儿（IVF）诊所。你必须坐飞机或开车去。而这些都是非常复杂的治疗，必须根据你的生理周期来安排。所以这是非常不可预测的。因此，你在考虑经济因素、地理准入的同时，还有排队等待的问题，对吧？如果你选择自费周期，通常可以安排诊所咨询。但如果你试图通过公共资助流程，那就有等待名单，可能长达数月，甚至数年。这与生育治疗中“时间至关重要”的普遍说法背道而驰。
Original English **>>**: How does access affect a person's ability to start their IVF journey? **>>**: I think there's a few things to talk about when we talk about access. Obviously, the first thing that we should talk about is financial access. IVF is expensive. It's somewhere in the order of 15 to $20,000. It can be a little bit less. It can be more depending on the medications and the protocols and whether you avail yourself of any sort of add on treatments. But it's very expensive. And I think it's also very important for people to know that it doesn't typically work the first time. So that $20,000 can quickly become 40. If you can afford it and scrounge it together, it can escalate beyond that as well. And so, you know, yes, there are some provinces and territories that offer some amount of funding to help support people through a fertility journey. But it's not there's not a single province or territory that funds it entirely. The other thing that we should talk about is geographic access. I think people will be surprised to know that there are some provinces and territories that don't have a single IVF clinic that does the complicated work of an egg retrieval or an embryo transfer. You have to get on a plane or drive. And these are very complicated treatments that have to be timed to your cycle. So it's very unpredictable. So you're layering on the finances, geographic access, and then, you know, there's waitlists too, right? Like if you're doing a private pay cycle, you can usually get in for a clinic consultation. But if you're trying to go through sort of the public funding process, there's a waitlist and they can be months long, they can be years long. And that goes against everything in fertility, where we're told constantly that time is of the essence.
### 试管婴儿（IVF）的身体折磨 **Interviewer**: 了解到这因人而异。对您而言，身体上承受的痛苦是什么？我记得您有急诊就诊经历。在五次取卵过程中，您经历了非常艰难的身体时刻。能否请您详细谈谈它对您身体造成的伤害？ **Catherine**: 我当初带着完全错误的心态开始试管婴儿（IVF）。我完全不知道这会给我带来多么大的身体上的痛苦。这还不包括情感上的折磨、经济上的压力，以及对人际关系的损耗。身体上，它非常艰难。我属于对药物反应非常好的人，这也是你想要的。我会长出 50 个卵泡。他们会从我的身体里取出 30 多个卵子。这就是你想要的，因为卵子越多，成功的几率就越高。 这也意味着我经历了取卵并发症，导致我身体充满积液，腹部胀气，非常难受，因为看起来就像怀孕了一样。而你所渴望的就是怀孕。我穿不了裤子，我感到疲惫，头痛欲裂，头晕目眩。在整个过程中，有几次因为药物我晕倒了，包括一次我在半夜醒来时发现自己在浴室地板上，到处都是血。然后我开始呕吐，休克，最终住进了医院，脸部缝了 11 针。你可能会认为那已经到了绝境。但之后我还是又做了一次。我又进行了一次取卵，再次晕倒。救护车来了，因为我的血压非常低。对某些人来说，这可能很顺利，没有那么大的痛苦。但我为这本书采访了很多人，也读了很多资料，我了解到，告诉人们你应该休息一天去做取卵手术，但第二天就可以回去工作，这对很多人来说是不真实的。我认为我们没有正确地向人们传达这到底是什么感觉。 **Interviewer**: 您还有一些需要手术的并发症。能谈谈那方面的情况吗？ **Catherine**: 当我们开始为让女儿 Sydney 拥有一个弟弟妹妹而努力时，我经历了一次流产。这次流产导致我需要做 D&C（刮宫术），这是一种扩张和刮除术，用来清除我身体自然排出妊娠组织方面遇到困难而残留的妊娠物。当时我并不知道。但理论是，而且我的医生也认为，通过这次刮宫手术，我子宫内可能产生了疤痕组织，而我子宫内的疤痕组织可能是我后来反复流产的原因，因为它会影响胚胎着床。所以，我最终接受了两次子宫手术，试图修复我子宫内的疤痕组织。
Original English **>>**: Understanding that it varies individually. What was the physical toll for you? I mean, you had E.R. visits. You had very difficult physical moments throughout five retrievals. Tell me a little bit about the toll it took on you. **>>**: I went into IVF with the total wrong mindset. I had no idea the physical toll that this was going to take on me. This is separate from the emotional toll, the financial toll, the toll on relationships. Physically, it was very difficult. I am somebody who responded very well to the medications, which is what you want. I would have 50 follicles growing. They would remove 30 some odd eggs from my body. That's that's what you want. Because the more eggs you have, the higher the chances are that you're going to be successful. What it also meant was that I had complications from retrievals where I would, you know, fill up with fluid and I would have like this bloating where I would, it was horrible because you would look really pregnant. And that's all you're wanting is to be pregnant. Like, I couldn't wear pants, I was tired, I had excruciating headaches, I would get dizzy. There were a couple of times where during the process, due to the medications, I fainted, including one time where I woke up on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with blood everywhere. And then I started vomiting, went into shock, ended up in the hospital needing 11 stitches in my face. And you would think that that would be some sort of rock bottom. But I did it again. And I did another retrieval and I fainted again. And the paramedics came because my blood pressure was so, you know, it's for some people, it can be straightforward. It can have not such a dramatic toll. But I interviewed people for this book and I've read a lot for this book, and I have learned that being told that you should take the day off of work to do your egg retrieval, but you can go back to work the next day isn't true for a lot of people. And I think we're not calibrating people's expectations about what it feels like. **>>**: And you had some complications also that required surgery. Can you talk a little bit about that? **>>**: I had a miscarriage when we were beginning our journey to give our daughter, Sydney, a sibling, and that miscarriage resulted in the need for a D and C, which is a dilation and curettage procedure to remove some retained tissues of pregnancy that my body was having trouble sort of naturally expelling, and I didn't know it at the time. But the theory is, and my doctors believe that through that D and C, there's the scraping that I had developed scar tissue in my uterus, and that the scar tissue in my uterus was actually potentially responsible for the miscarriages that I had afterward, because it can interfere with implantation. So I did end up needing uterine surgery twice to try to repair the scar tissue in my uterus.
### 心理与情感上的巨大消耗 **Interviewer**: 您在身体上经历了这么多。那么，它对您精神和心理上也造成了怎样的影响呢？您似乎被 IVF 牢牢 grip 住了。 **Catherine**: 对我，以及我为这本书采访的许多患者来说，IVF 是非常耗费心神的。对许多人来说，这简直是一场关乎生死的殊死搏斗。它会变得极其耗神。它占据了你全部的思绪，占据了你的日子，占据了你的日程表，让你的日程表变成一个雷区，因为你不知道，朋友的婴儿派对时你是否已经怀孕？或者你是否正经历流产？或者一次失败的胚胎移植让你心碎？我将其描述为，它就是你生活的“白噪音”。 **Interviewer**: 以及它对人际关系的冲击。例如，当你无法怀孕时，家人、朋友或同事却生了孩子，那是什么样的感觉？ **Catherine**: 是的，我（们）认为这对人际关系会造成严重的冲击，在某些情况下确实会如此。当然，人际关系也可能因此得到加强，因为你会发现人们以各种美好的方式支持你，让你感到真正的被关爱。它也可能在你与那些过得更顺利的朋友、兄弟姐妹或亲戚之间造成相当大的距离，他们可能并不特别在意你正在经历什么，或者你只是因为他们的存在而被触动。所以，你知道，这会让你感到非常孤立。 人们常常不知道该如何与你谈论这件事。你也不知道自己想听什么，或者想说什么。这也是我写这本书的原因之一，我希望人们能有一个地方，可以借此来处理一些他们正在经历的情感创伤、正在经历的不确定性，让他们感到被看见和被支持，而无需一直向亲近的人解释一切。
Original English **>>**: You've been through a lot physically. So talk a little bit about the toll it took on you mentally and psychologically as well, that you were in this grip of IVF. **>>**: IVF for me and for many of the patients that I interviewed for the book is very consuming. It is, for many people, an existential fight for like for life, literally. And it can become just very consuming. And it takes over your mind entirely. It takes over your days, it takes over your calendars, it makes your calendar a landmine because you know, are you going to be pregnant at this friend's baby shower? Or are you going to be miscarrying? Or are you going to be devastated by a transfer that didn't work? It it's really the white noise of your life is the way I sort of describe it. **>>**: And the toll it takes on relationships. For instance, with either family members or friends or colleagues that are having babies when you're not able to get pregnant. What was that like? **>>**: Yeah, there's there's a serious toll, I think, on relationships that can happen in some cases. Of course, they can be strengthened because you find that people show up for you in these beautiful ways and you feel really supported. It can also cause a fair amount of distance between yourself and friends or siblings or relatives who are having an easier time and who maybe aren't being super sensitive to what you're going through, or you're just triggered by their very existence. And so, you know, it can be very isolating. Oftentimes people don't know how to talk to you about it. You don't really know what you want to hear or what you want to say. And that's part of the reason I wrote the book, is I wanted people to have a place where they can sort of work through some of these emotional sort of trauma that they're going through, this uncertainty that they're going through in a way that has them feel seen and supported, but not necessarily having to explain everything all the time to a loved one.
### 生育旅程中的哀伤与失落 **Interviewer**: 我觉得这有点像是在哀悼，对吧？当你哀悼亲人离世时，人们不知道该说什么。在很多方面，生育之旅就是一个不断哀悼的过程，不是吗？ **Catherine**: 我想你说得对。就我而言，我一路走来确实感受了很多悲伤。有未能实现心中所想的家庭的悲伤，你为无法达到你曾设想的那个目标而哀悼。但还有更实际的悲伤：你去做超声波检查，看到了心跳，看到了超声波影像，把手放在肚子上，感受到了身体的变化。那些细胞已经变成了你生命中的某个人。所以当你失去一个孕期时，我感觉就像是失去了一个婴儿。而要经历这些，常常是在一种非常血腥、非常具象的方式下，这完全是压倒性的。 这真的很艰难，因为有情感上的失落，但同时你的身体也在发生变化。你对身体关闭妊娠感到愤怒，你对为什么又会发生在我身上感到沮丧。我想，我们现在谈论得更多了，但这种情况其实非常普遍，对吧？据估计，四分之一的女性经历过流产。我觉得在 IVF 之旅中，有很多悲伤发生。有时候是过程中的一些小事，有时候则是大事。我认识一些有过死产经历的女性，这简直是难以想象的。
Original English **>>**: I think it's a little bit like grief, right? People don't know what to say to you when you're grieving the loss of a loved one. In many ways, the fertility journey is a series of grieving, is it not? **>>**: I think that's I think that's right. In my case, I did feel a lot of grief along the way. There was the grief of not making your way to the family that you envisioned and sort of your grieving this, this inability to get to where you thought you were going to be. But then there's like the more sort of tangible grief of, you've gone to an ultrasound, you've seen the heartbeat, you've held the sonogram image, you've put the hand on your tummy, you've felt the changes in your body. Those cells have become somebody to you. And so when you lose a pregnancy, I felt like I was losing a baby. And it is it was completely overwhelming to move through that in such a gory way, oftentimes and in such a physical way. It's a lot because there's the emotional loss. But then there's also this physical thing that's happening to you, and you're angry at your body for shutting down a pregnancy, and you're frustrated that, why is this happening to me again? And I think, you know, we talk about it more now, but it happens so frequently, right? Like 1 in 4 women, it's estimated experience miscarriage. And I feel like there is a lot of grief that happens in an IVF journey. And it's sometimes it's these smaller things along the way. And sometimes it's these big things. You know, I spoke with women who had stillborns and it's unfathomable.
### 拥抱代孕与意外的惊喜 **Interviewer**: 您的旅程继续进行，到了您开始寻找代孕妈妈的那一步，您是如何过渡的？ **Catherine**: 我认为对我们来说，我在书中也写到了，在我们旅程的那个阶段，我们开始关注可能要经历代孕之旅时，我仍然希望最终能是我自己成功怀孕并一直保持妊娠。所以我觉得这实际上是开始考虑这件事的好时机，因为我能够以一种可能没那么情绪化的方式来处理，比如与代孕机构进行咨询通话，了解整个过程。然后，当真正踏上那段旅程时，我对我自己的身体已经失去了很多信任，我知道我们需要帮助。它从一种令人恐惧的事情，你正在放弃控制，变成了一条我所知道的、能够真正变得美好的、充满希望的途径。 当我们与一位潜在的代孕妈妈 Stacy 通话时，我立刻就感觉到一股如释重负的感觉：“好吧，我想我能做到，我们能做到。” 这是一件很棒的事，我能够信任她。以及最终我们选择了第二位代孕妈妈，因为这是一个非常复杂的旅程，她们给了我们充分的理由去信任她们。 **Interviewer**: 我真想听听，在你发现自己自然怀孕的消息时，那是什么样的感受？尤其是在你第二位代孕妈妈怀孕三个月的时候。 **Catherine**: 我们的代孕妈妈 Kendra，祝福她，当时大约怀孕 20 周。那时候，我一直在想，我感觉不舒服。我恶心、疲惫，我的皮肤也发生了一些变化，我觉得这可能预示着我身体里有什么不对劲。但我记得我跟我的丈夫说，如果我不是那么了解情况，我可能会觉得我怀孕了。但出于很多原因，你知道，其中最主要的是，我的子宫近年来一直不太适合怀孕，我们认为那不太可能。 但有一天下午我实在太恶心了，我还是做了一个验孕棒。还没等我把那个小粉盖盖回去，我就看到了两条线。我的大脑根本无法理解发生了什么。于是我打电话给我的丈夫，我说，“过来，过来，快过来，把这个给他看。” 他看了看说，“这是什么？” 用的语言可能更生动一些。我突然放声大笑起来，因为这太滑稽、太不可思议、太令人难以置信了，竟然在我们经历了所有这一切之后，在我们终于走上了一条似乎稳固的道路——代孕妈妈已经怀孕 20 周时——我竟然也怀孕了。 我们计算了一下，发现我大约怀孕七周。直到我们去生育诊所，在超声波上看到闪烁的心跳时，我才敢相信这可能是真的，因为我们经历过太多次失落。作为一个经历过流产的人，而且我认为我可以代表许多经历过这种情况的女性，你不再真正相信验孕棒了，你也不敢让自己进入那种状态。你不敢让自己感到兴奋。有好几周，我们才真正开始相信这是真的，这是正在发生的。随着怀孕的进展，我们觉得：“这是真的。” 我们感到无比喜悦，因为我，我们想要很多孩子。
Original English **>>**: And when your journey went along and you came to the part where you were looking for a surrogate, how did you make that transition? **>>**: So I think for us, and I write about this, that at the point in our journey where we turned our attention to potentially going through a surrogacy journey, I was still hopeful that in the end, I was actually going to be the one that was going to get pregnant and stay pregnant. And so I think it was a good time actually, to start thinking about that, because I was able to sort of move through it in maybe a less emotional way, sort of having the consultation calls with the surrogacy agencies and understanding the process. And then when it came time to actually embark on that journey, I had lost so much trust in my own body that I knew that we needed help. And it turned from this kind of sort of scary thing where you're relinquishing control to this hopeful avenue that I knew could actually be quite beautiful. And once we got on the phone with a potential surrogate named Stacy, I could tell right away that I just had this, like, relief go through me that, okay, you know, I think I think I can do this, I think we can do this. And it was this wonderful thing where I was able to trust her. And ultimately our second surrogate, because it was a very complicated journey to do this, because they gave us every reason to trust them. **>>**: I just would love to hear how it was for you when you found out you were naturally pregnant after, you know, three months of your second surrogate's pregnancy. **>>**: So our surrogate Kendra, bless her, was around, you know, 20 ish weeks pregnant. And at that time, I was thinking like, I'm not feeling well. I was nauseous and tired and my skin was kind of having these changes that I thought were maybe indicative of something going on in my body. But I remember saying to my husband, like, if I didn't know any better, I would think maybe I was pregnant. But for many reasons, you know, chief among them, the fact that my uterus had not been particularly hospitable in recent years, we didn't think that that was the case. But I was so nauseous one afternoon that I did take a pregnancy test. And before I could even put the, like, little pink cap back on, I looked down and there were two lines and I was just my brain like, could not compute what was happening. And so I called my husband and I'm like, come here, come here, come here, hand him the test. And he's like, what is this? Using much more colourful language. And I just sort of burst out laughing because it seemed so like comical and nonsensical and unbelievable to me that after everything that we had been through, when we were finally on this sort of straight line of a journey with a surrogate that was 20 weeks pregnant, that all of a sudden I too was pregnant. And we did the math and we realised I was about seven weeks. And so it wasn't until we went into the fertility clinic and actually saw on the ultrasound the flickering heartbeat, that I let myself think that this might actually be real, because we'd had so many losses. And as somebody who had been through miscarriage, and I think I can speak for a lot of women who have, you don't really trust the pregnancy test anymore, and you don't really let yourself go to that place. You don't really let yourself feel excited. And it took a while, like many weeks, for us to actually believe that this was real, that this was happening. And as the pregnancy went on, we were like, this is real. And we were so joyful because I, we wanted we wanted lots of kids.
### 对IVF营销的期望与现实呼唤 **Interviewer**: 您觉得 IVF（试管婴儿）能否受益于现在围绕围绝经期和更年期进行的市场推广？ **Catherine**: 我对现在围绕围绝经期和更年期进行的推广活动深表感激。我是一名 40 岁出头的女性，也正朝着那个方向前进。我非常感激现在有一个响亮的对话正在进行。我相信还有很多工作要做，但令人欣慰的是，这并没有发生在阴影中。令人欣慰的是，我们在公交站都能看到相关信息。令人欣慰的是，我们在谈论它。 我认为关于生育的讨论正在增多，但还需要更多。而且我认为我们需要以更坦诚、更诚实的态度来讨论。我认为我们需要让人们理解并认识到，生育能力会随着年龄而下降。流产率会随着年龄而增加，IVF 的成功率也会随着年龄而下降。我们需要非常清楚地说明这一点，这样人们才能衡量他们的期望。 我还认为我们需要更清晰地说明它可能对人们造成的经济负担、身体负担和情感负担。因为当你来到诊所时，你通常已经身心俱疲，但你仍然试图保持希望，因为你即将要做一些不同的事情，一些新的事情。科学就在这里提供帮助。在很多方面，它确实起到了作用。显然，我非常感激 IVF 和现代科学。但它也有局限性，我认为我们需要谈论这些局限性。我认为我们需要更清晰地告知患者，无论是女性、男性，还是所有人，这到底涉及到什么，以及它看起来和感觉起来会是怎样的。 **Interviewer**: 怀抱着两个婴儿在怀里。您会对那些即将踏上这段旅程的女性或夫妇说些什么？ **Catherine**: 我想说，最重要的一点是，请衡量你们的期望，了解对处于您个人情况的人来说，成功率是多少。多问问题，因为作为踏上这场生存之旅的生育患者，我们往往非常绝望，也非常缺乏信息。所以这可能是一个危险的组合。所以请多问问题，做好你们的研究。 然后，我想说，这听起来可能有点矛盾，但我想你们也需要保持希望，因为希望会支撑你们走下去。我说这听起来矛盾，是因为我也让你们衡量期望，但我认为你可以调整你的期望，同时仍然怀有希望。期望某事发生与希望某事发生，这是有区别的。 **Interviewer**: 好的。非常感谢您。 **Catherine**: 谢谢。
Original English **>>**: How do you think IVF would benefit from the marketing push that perimenopause and menopause are getting right now? **>>**: I am grateful for the push that perimenopause and menopause are getting right now. Like I am a woman in my early 40s, like I am headed in that direction. And I am so grateful that there is this loud conversation that is happening. I'm sure there's much more that needs to happen, but how wonderful that this isn't happening in the shadows. How wonderful that we see it on bus stops. How wonderful that we're talking about it. And I think that there is more conversation around fertility that's happening, but there needs to be even more. And I think we need to be having it in much more frank and honest terms. And I think we need to understand and convey to people that fertility does decline with age. Miscarriage rates increase with age, IVF success rates decline with age. We need to be very clear about that so that people can sort of measure their expectations. And I also think we need to be more clear about the financial toll, the physical toll and the emotional toll that this can have on people, because by the time you show up at a clinic, you're usually at a pretty beaten down place, but you're trying to be hopeful because you're about to do something different and you're about to do something new. And science is here to help. And in many ways it does. And obviously, I am very grateful for IVF and modern science. But there are limits, and I think we need to talk about those. And I think we need to be much more clear with patients, women, men, everyone, all people about what this actually involves and what it can look and feel like. **>>**: With two babies in arms. What would you tell women or couples who are embarking on this journey? **>>**: I mean, I would say first and foremost, like, please measure your expectations, understand what the success rates are for somebody in your personal position. Ask a lot of questions because as fertility patients embarking on this existential journey, we are oftentimes quite desperate and oftentimes quite uninformed. So that can be a dangerous combination. So please ask questions and do your research. And then I would also say in this kind of maybe sounds a bit contradictory, but I think you also need to have hope because it is what's going to carry you through. I say that it sounds contradictory because I'm also asking you to measure your expectations, but I think you can kind of calibrate your expectations and still have hope. There's a difference between expecting something to happen and hoping for something to happen. **>>**: Great. Thank you very much. **>>**: Thank you.