Table 4.

Themes Which Emerged in Response to the Open-Ended Question “Is there anything else you would like us to know about your fertility experience?”

Reasons for delayed childbearing	“I delayed pregnancy because of residency. I could not imagine having a child during residency. I did a 2-year post-doc to improve my application for fellowship. I continued to delay, as I did not want to appear obviously pregnant while interviewing, or risk having morning sickness. Eventually when we attempted, we were unsuccessful for 1 year”
	“We are planning (embryo) transfer, but must wait until certain career events happen.”
	“I am postponing children to finish professional exams, which may impact my fertility in the future”
Stress due to infertility	“It was the most emotionally painful and psychologically difficult experience I have had in my life. Being an (ob)/gyn during our struggle made it significantly harder.”
	“Delayed attempted at conception until last few months of fellowship. We underwent 3 cycles of IVF and 3 surgeries in my first year of practice. This was a significant stressor in both my work and personal life.”
	“My fertility concerns did not result in depression but did affect my mood and concentration at work”
Stigma of pregnancy	“We did IVF and had to hide monitoring appointments and retrievals from partners.”
	“Interviewed for gyn onc fellowship while pregnant and I do think there is a cultural bias in our field against reproduction…imagine that [ART] would be really hard as even with ‘normal’ reproductive and pregnancy issues. I didn't talk about it, minimized, made sure as much as possible that it didn't impact how I functioned or was perceived as a trainee.
Optimal or suboptimal stage of training/career to start a family	“There was unspoken pressure not to have children during training… I believe residents and fellows should be encouraged and perhaps required to have intervening years of normal life to achieve personal goals throughout their training without giving up their long term goal of completing programs. Male and female roles in family life are different than they were in generations past. Perhaps medical education should catch up with the times.”
	“Due to my desire to avoid delivering during clinical years of fellowship training, I'm going to attempt pregnancy #2 now and my wife is having embryos frozen (which I will then carry) after fellowship.”
Barriers to infertility treatment or fertility preservation	“Wanted to cryopreserve embryos at age 28 but cost was prohibitive so got pregnant and delivered at age 30. Would have liked to delay childbearing further”
	“The cost of IVF was very hard to bear as a fellow in a State where it was not covered. IVF was covered in the state I did residency in.”
	“could not afford fertility preservation during training. now that i am done with training i am almost advanced maternal age. it does give me concern for future fertility.”

IVF, in vitro fertilization.