Semen Secrets: Truths and confessions of a wife’s journey through male infertility
Author: TJ Peyten
Semen Secrets is the authors’ memoir of her experience of her husband’s male factor infertility, told from the wife’s perspective. TJ describes her thoughts and emotions from when they decided to start to try for a family, through to finding out that her husband wasn’t producing any sperm, and how that made their future look.
Infertility is a taboo subject in most societies still. Male factor infertility is another level of taboo in all societies. If you then add into the mix male factor infertility in the African-American culture, then you get crickets. I applaud TJ Peyten for bringing this subject into the twenty-first century.
Her raw, honest account of how her husband’s lack of sperm affected both of them and their marriage – her husband having to deal with his feelings of inadequacy, her having to cope with her unfulfilled desire to be a mum and keep his secret. From the moment they received the semen test result their relationship was tested – her husband became unrecognisable to her and they became strangers, even considering divorce when they had known each other for most of their lives.
Through the book, TJ shares her thoughts as to why God has chosen them to go on this lonely journey, and the unfairness of several years of their life spent waiting and waiting whilst others around them welcome their children into their lives. Even though their story is written from the wife’s experience, any man who is dealing with male issues will really benefit from reading it too – he won’t feel so alone.
‘Semen Secrets’ is a must-read if you are a couple dealing with male factor infertility, professionals who pass on semen test results to men/couples, professionals who care for couples facing male factor infertility but also infertility, and for anyone who has family or friends who are going through infertility. You will not be sorry you took a couple of hours to read this book – I read it in an evening.
By Sheila Lamb, author of the This is series of fertility books; Infertility doesn’t care about your ethnicity; and My Fertility Book: all the fertility and infertility explanations you will ever need, from A to Z