Getting Pregnant Naturally_ Healthy Choi - Winifred Conkling [2]
Numbers count, but when it comes to fertility, sperm quality is even more important than quantity. A man can have a high number of sperm, but if a majority of them are abnormally shaped or poor swimmers, he can have a harder time becoming a father than a man with fewer sperm of a higher quality. Sperm quality is based on several factors, including motility (how fast and straight the sperm swims) and morphology (sperm size and shape). At least 60 percent of the sperm should be normal in appearance and motility. The quality of the seminal fluid—its volume and viscosity or stickiness—also plays an important role. Problems with sperm can stem from a number of causes, including a varicocele (a varicose vein in the scrotum), prostate infections, ductal obstructions, ejaculatory dysfunction, mumps, alcohol use, nicotine, illness, or excessive fatigue.
Many couples experience periods of infertility that come and go for no apparent reason. Approximately 25 percent of women have reported episodes of infertility at some point during their reproductive lives. In many cases, a couple may not know they are experiencing impaired fertility because they are not trying to get pregnant at that time. This ongoing fluctuation between periods of fertility and infertility may help to explain why each month approximately 3 percent of couples with unexplained infertility suddenly conceive on their own.
Subfertile couples may benefit from experimenting with the fertility-enhancing natural remedies and practices suggested in this book. Of course, fertility drugs and assisted reproductive technologies can offer hope to couples with serious reproductive problems, but most subfertile couples would do well to begin with simple, natural methods of enhancing their fertility. In many cases, these low-tech treatments will work and a couple can avoid turning to expensive, invasive, and stressful high-tech fertility treatments.
WHEN TO GET HELP
If you and your partner have had intercourse without using contraception twice a week for a year without becoming pregnant, it’s time to consider consulting a reproductive endocrinologist for counseling, as well as a urologist specializing in malefactor infertility. In addition, you should see a physician before the one-year mark if one of the following circumstances exist:
If a woman is over age forty.
If a woman is over age thirty-five and has not conceived after six months of regular unprotected intercourse.
If either partner may have scarring or damage to reproductive organs because of infections or sexually transmitted diseases.
If a woman has irregular periods or no periods at all.
If a woman has used or is using an intrauterine device (IUD).
If a woman has a history of endometriosis, pelvic infections, abdominal or urinary tract surgery, polycystic ovarian syndrome, or exposure to toxic chemicals or radiation.
If a man has a history of mumps, measles, very high fevers, or exposure to toxic chemicals or radiation.
If either partner is the child of a mother who took the synthetic estrogen diethylstilbestrol (DES) during pregnancy to prevent miscarriage. DES daughters often suffer from a range of reproductive problems; DES sons may have low sperm counts and other sperm anomalies.
MILESTONES TO REMEMBER
1978: The world’s first “test-tube baby,” Louise Brown of Great Britain, was born.
1981: The first American test-tube baby, Elizabeth Jordan Carr, was born in Norfolk, Virginia.
Mid-1980s: Surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead fought to maintain custody of the infant “Baby M,” to whom she gave birth under contract with another couple.
1992: A sixty-two-year-old Sicilian widow became pregnant through artificial insemination with sperm that had been collected from her husband and frozen before he died.
1992: A