This second edition provides mental health professionals with tools to understand and treat patients who suffer from infertility or pregnancy loss, as well as new guidelines for processing their own reproductive traumas.
 
A unifying theme for all patients dealing with infertility or pregnancy loss is the reproductive story: the conscious and unconscious hopes, dreams, and assumptions they have about becoming a parent. For individuals and couples experiencing reproductive trauma, their ideal future has fallen apart, leaving them bereft and hopeless. This book focuses on how helping professionals can work with patients’ reproductive stories to help them grieve, cope, and heal. Additionally, it underscores issues that therapists endure in their own reproductive stories and their impact on therapy.
 
With updates in research and new case examples, this edition has been expanded to offer a holistic understanding of reproductive trauma. It reviews advances in reproductive technology—including cryopreservation, in vitro fertilization, and genetic testing—and considers the evolution and influence of social and cultural constructs, like gender, sexuality, and parenthood, including considerations for LGBTQ+ parents.

Janet Jaffe, PhD, has a private practice in San Diego and is interested in issues of loss and bereavement related to miscarriage, infertility, and other reproductive trauma and its impact on individuals and couples. Dr. Jaffe is a co-founder and director of the Center for Reproductive Psychology in San Diego and is co-author of Unsung Lullabies, Understanding and Coping with Infertility. She has presented at conferences across the country on the psychology of the reproductive process, both to professional organizations and to the general public, and is an adjunct faculty member of the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University.

Introduction
Part I. The Patient’s Viewpoint
Chapter 1. How Things Should Have Been
Chapter 2. Technological Developments, Ethical Concerns, and Emotional Constants
Chapter 3. Our World Is Falling Apart
Chapter 4. Pain and Hope
Chapter 5. Helping Patients Cope: Treatment Options
Chapter 6. Who Is the Patient? Third-Party Reproduction and Adoption
Chapter 7. Adjuncts to Psychotherapy
Chapter 8. From Trauma to Growth: Healing and Change
Part II. The Provider’s Viewpoint
Chapter 9. What Patients Want to Know About Us
Chapter 10. The Therapist’s Reproductive Story
Chapter 11. The Pregnant Therapist and the Reproductive Patient
Chapter 12. Taking Care of Ourselves While Taking Care of Others
Conclusion
References
Index
About the Author