The therapist is not doing her job, and she should know better than to have her personal problems interfere with her patients' treatment. End of story. This is like excusing a lawyer for embezzling clients' escrow funds, or forgetting court or filing dates, or excusing a doctor for making the wrong diagnosis, all as a result of personal problems. No one should be asked to tolerate it.

I had a therapist who was acting out in similar ways. While she helped me through a big personal and professional crisis, I was upset, but clueless, over her behavior, and tolerated it for far longer than I should have. Her issues seemed to be mostly administrative: payment, schedules, returning phone calls. She once forgot to cash a large check for nearly a year, and then suddenly did so without even giving me the courtesy of notifying me -- it had been so long that I had stopped noticing that it was uncashed when I reconciled my checking account, and it did a number on my grad student budget.

When I met my now husband, also a therapist, he told me (a) there were many competent therapists who would be glad to cash my checks and return phone calls promptly; (b) to fire her ass immediately; and (c) to tell her why. I found a new therapist quickly (it was easy) and told the old one why I was leaving. I was and am very glad I did. It was worth the cost of the extra session to spend 45 minutes telling her about all of her screwups and watching her fumble around with no good answers. The writer owes it to him/herself to let the therapist know there is a problem. It can be an important step to learning how to take care of him/herself emotionally. I spent tens of thousands of dollars with my next therapist over five years working out very important work and life issues, which I would have been happy to spend with her had she not screwed up so completely.

She is a very prominent expert in the field of attachment theory, and I cringe whenever I see her name in one of my husband's professional journals. It just goes to show that sometimes the most highly-credentialed experts are not the best practitioners.

Ick.

1. Ayelet Waldman is a bad writer.

2. Ayelet Waldman (perhaps unwittingly) is a bad mother. She invades her young kids' privacy in the advancement of her work.

3. Why is Salon giving her a platform?

4. Where is Michael Chabon in all of this? Why isn't he protecting his kids?

I'd like to make two points on the general subject of fertility treatments and the fertility industry.

First, one of the reasons that insurance should cover fertility treatments is that without such coverage, it becomes something that only the wealthy and upper middle classes can afford. Massachusetts now requires all insurance plans to cover fertility treatments, thus making this aspect of medicine more widely available. While one can make the argument that fertility treatments are not essential to living life, many readers above have articulately presented why that is not true. Making this treatment available only to the wealthy (or those willing to go deeply into debt) will create further economic and social stratification in our society. Other people's reproductive decisions should remain private, including to the government and insurance companies.

Second, several years ago my husband and I went through two years of testing and treatment at a major fertility clinic in the NYC area. Our infertility was never diagnosed (thus, it was of unknown origin), we spent $50K on six escalating treatment cycles, including two rounds of Chlomid, two IUIs and two IVFs with ICSI. At the end of the last failed ivf cycle, it was clear that this clinic didn't want to have anything further to do with us, because we were going to ruin their statistics. We were very lucky and eventually conceived successfully via alternative medicine. I was astonished throughout our ordeal at how unpleasant and lacking in empathy many of the professionals we encountered were. Our experience with the fertility industry was a bitter one, and I would advise anyone with unexplained infertility to stay away from any treatments until all testing and alternative medical options are exhausted.

Your body doesn't work the way it is supposed to. Under some interpretations of the law, having children is considered an important aspect of living, thus, as a legal matter, infertility can be considered a disability.

I'm not a Hillary fan (she panders, she was wrong on Iraq, she tried to inject religion into too many discussions), but this improves my opinion of her significantly! And thanks to the first poster for so succinctly pointing out Laura Bush's failures in her campaign to be June Cleaver.

Nomar Garciaparra was named after his father, Ramon.

It's easier than you think. Dr. Spock was right -- trust your instincts. And the stuff you think you care about now, or should care about later, doesn't matter and you probably won't remember it anyway. (I was lucky -- movies got really shitty around the time I got pregnant, so I haven't missed too many movies that I really wanted to see.) It gets better and better (it's still good -- my kid's five) until it stops and they become sullen teenagers. And stay away from the perfect-seeming, anxious, or in-control parents. They don't have your kid. If you must get books, get the American Academy of Pediatrics medical books (they are a lifesaver in the middle of the night when you can't figure out what to google) and anything by T. Berry Brazelton. And try to avoid overly fussy preschools, playgrounds and ANY private school, if at all possible.