By the time a couple walks through the door at Zouves Fertility Center and meets Dr. Christo Zouves, they have been through the fertility medicine mill; they've consulted with other fertility specialists and been told they just can't have children. Offering a unique combination of hope, compassion, and cutting-edge technology, Dr. Zouves changes that for many of his patients. They often leave his care with their dreams fulfilled, expecting one child or more. But the paths that take these couples to his door and the treatments that follow are nothing less than miracle stories--stories of hope, medicine, persistence and pure desire.

Dr. Zouves is the first to tell Stephan and Anna of Anna's blocked fallopian tubes, and her body's immune reactions that have hampered conception for seven years. An assisted hatching procedure that aids embryo implantation, along with drugs to calm her immune response, result in a baby girl two years later.

William had a vasectomy at twenty-eight, just before his first marriage dissolved. But thanks to the revolutionary procedure know as testicular sperm extraction, or TESE, he and his new wife, Jamie, are the biological parents of two beautiful girls.

Married since they were twenty-five, Judith and Joe started trying to have children just as they hit forty. In spite of every kind of fertility treatment, for ten long years, Judith miscarried every time she conceived. After a successful embryo transfer she and Joe become parents for the first time at fifty-one.

Expecting Miracles provides a moving, in-depth look at the options, the decisions, and the unexpected twists, turns, and disappointments that couples experience as they work with Dr. Zouves. As he shares his own story and those of the patients, egg donors, and surrogates he has worked with, Dr. Zouves provides a rare view of the human side of reproductive medicine and all that goes into helping infertile couples realize their dreams of parenthood.

"...A beautiful book by a true healer. Every physician and patient should read this book to learn the value of love, hope, faith, desire and intention; subjects which are not a normal component of medical education but which are important for healing and living a fertile life."

Bernie Siegel, M.D.
Author: Love, Medicine & Miracles; Prescriptions for Living

"...Expecting Miracles informs us of important facts about reproduction and assisted reproductive technology. It shows us how tremendously important having a child can be to some individuals. And it provides us with important lessons about the human relationships of people in families and between doctors and their patients. Christo Zouves is a compelling teacher and story-teller. I also believe that he must be a wonderful doctor?"

Rosamond Rhodes, Ph.D., Director of Bioethics Education at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

"Dr. Zouves's description of his relationships with patients is an excellent
example for practitioners in the field. Rather than describing his patients as
interesting cases, Dr. Zouves describes them first as people, people who are
dealing with a life crisis. His compassion and concern for his patients comes
through as he tells their stories. One of the stresses that infertile couples
often identify is dealing with a medical establishment that doesn't seem to care
or that treats them as if they are on an assembly line. Dr. Zouves illustrates
a preferred model for supporting patients through their treatment."

William Panak, President - Fertile Thoughts

"Expecting Miracles restores your faith in the human spirit; people helping
others to overcome adversity and achieve their dreams. The determination from
every individual to beat the odds facing them is extraordinary. Thanks to Dr.
Zouves and his colleagues, miracles occur on a regular basis. Reading this book
is like being on an emotional roller coaster; it makes you understand the
incredible highs, devastating disappointments and personal growth experienced by
everyone involved. I couldn't put it down."

Rick Hansen, President and CEO
Rick Hansen Institute

"This testament to the pain of infertility and the promise of reproductive technology relentlessly accentuates the positive even as it describes the utter desperation of couples who are willing to do whatever it takes to have a child.

It's not that Zouves, who is medical director at the San Francisco based Zouves Fertility Center--one of the few in the country to offer its clients a money-back guarantee--is blind to what his patients are going through. On the contrary, he does an excellent job of recounting the physical, emotional, and financial toll that infertility treatment can take on his patients and their families. It's just that in a book that considers every possible obstacle to having a baby -- advanced age, endometriosis, fibroids, cancer, vasectomy, low sperm count and/or motility, immune system problems, to name just a few -- nearly every couple depicted here emerges from the infertility ordeal with at least one healthy newborn. To be sure, most of them had to go pretty far afield; many underwent multiple cycles of in vitro fertilization, others had to rely on sperm or egg donors. Some even resorted to surrogates. The details of their treatment are described unflinchingly: hundreds of hormone shots, multiple miscarriages, the heartbreak of being "a little bit pregnant!" after embryos are implanted, only to have the "pregnancy" vanish, and the irony of "selective reduction," i.e., aborting on or more fetuses when fertility treatments work too well..

For those grappling with infertility, Zouves's work, which makes the intricacies of biology understandable to the lay reader, offers a useful primer on cutting-edge science. And while it holds out much-needed hope to those who yearn for children, the book would have been more valuable had it reflected the reality that miracles do not happen every day."

KIRKUS REVIEWS, July 1, 1999

"This is an excellent book with a captive readership: the one percent of infertile couples who must resort to high technology to conceive children. Zouves, a medical director of a large San Francisco Fertility practice, writes convincingly and with great feeling about seemingly impossible cases. The patients are as diverse as the procedure: lesbian and straight couples, older and younger couples, several of them adoptive parents seeking more children via intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) and in vitro fertilization (IF) with or without surrogacy and donor eggs. Zouves is himself the father of two children, one autistic; he displays real empathy for his patients, dealing as they do with a medical condition that alters every aspect of family life. Not only the infertile but their families and friends can benefit from this book; buy multiple copies. Highly recommended."

Catherine Arnott Smith, Center for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pittsburgh.