Fertility
Fertility is an important issue for any couple wanting to start or grow a family. It’s particularly important when you find yourself struggling to conceive – this can often lead to fears that either you or your partner may be infertile.
Testing for Infertility
If you’re worried you may be incapable of conceiving as a couple, don’t jump to any conclusions – have yourselves tested to make sure one way or the other. It may simply be that the man in your relationship has a lot (delete and change to low) sperm count or low sperm activity levels. This makes it harder to conceive naturally, but not impossible.
Infertility tests for women are fairly cheap these days and can be done in the privacy of your own home, although you should be aware that home tests are not 100% accurate. In order to get a clear idea of whether you will be able to conceive naturally or not and what your chances are, you should see a doctor to have a professional testing carried out on both you and your partner.
Improving Fertility Naturally
One of the best things you can do to improve your chances of conceiving naturally is timing your intercourse for the appropriate times in the ovulation cycle. You need to work out when the woman in the relationship is most fertile each month, so you can ensure you get in as many sessions of intercourse as possible in the right time frame. This will maximize your chances of a natural conception.
Herbal remedies can also help improve your chances of conceiving. Vitamin B6, evening primrose oil and Vitamin C can all help improve your chances of conception. In many cases it’s actually simply a case of being deficient in an important nutrient – once you bring that nutrient into your diet through supplements, it becomes easier to get pregnant.
Options for Infertile Couples
Of course, discovering one of you really is infertile is not the end of the line. Options still exist through artificial insemination, IVF and surrogate mothers.
Artificial insemination is simply the process of fertilizing the egg inside the uterus by injecting (change word to inseminating) sperm, rather than through natural intercourse. This can be done with the man’s sperm, or a donor’s sperm if the man is completely infertile.
IVF is a very effective form of conceiving artificially, which involved fertilizing the egg outside of the body and then implanting the embryo into the mother or a surrogate mother – this is why IVF children are referred to as ‘test tube babies.’
