It is only recently that the problem of infertility, like adoption has started to receive major attention. Many factors are involved in the reason for infertility, and you need to see a doctor to have those problems diagnosed. It is not an easy route to take, speaking to a specialist to find out who has the problem when you decide to pursue a course of treatment. In the United States for example, approximately one out of every nine couples is childless because of infertility; it is a major medical and social problem.

Most couple will try to conceive for a full year before speaking to their doctor or specialist about taking a full medical examination to determine their overall health; also to see if there are any physical reasons why they haven’t been able to have a child. Your mental attitude can also be a factor and none more so than with women, who are mature, listening to misleading information about problems with conception, often become convinced they will not get pregnant because they are too old. This mental state often affects couples when they become certain they are infertile and it destroys any chances of them conceiving. Unfortunately, there is another condition that affects women who have already had their first child but have failed to conceive again even after a full year of trying, and it is known as Secondary infertility.

The most common problem for men who have fertility problems is the actual sperm. The reason for this is, according to clinical evidence, that some men have high levels of oxidative stress and this causes a problem with their sperm quality. Fortunately, similar research indicates that this situation can be reversed and methods to reduce the oxidative stress will likely improve the chances of conception. Your chances of improving your fertility can also be enhanced by taking natural vitamins and minerals; even if you are having other medical treatment as it won’t cause any damage and a healthy body is a good starting place for fertility improvement.

When you consider the costs associated with adoption or medical procedures – and the high failure rate – a small investment in good quality mineral, vitamin and essential nutrient supplements as a natural treatment is very appealing. Increasing the level of endorphins and brain chemicals that reduce stress by using acupuncture is another infertility technique that has been shown to work. Fertility treatment isn’t always covered by your medical insurance although you could claim that it is a necessary and legitimate medical expense. Still, if you are unlucky with your claim then take heart because infertility treatment is tax-deductible.

infertility.synthasite.com

In other situations, this goal may not be met as easily and some couples will realize that having a child is more important to them than having a biological child. Many of these couples will begin to weigh their choices in adoption, which is why infertility and adoption support so often go hand in hand.

Finding Resolution

There are compelling reasons to look for infertility and adoption support when a couple begins considering adopting a child. Before the adoption process can be started, a couple needs to resolve their feelings about their inability to have a biological child. For some, this is an easy transition that doesn’t require much grieving time – perhaps because the couple has been exposed to the adoption process through other family members or maybe has been adopted themselves. For others, time will need to be spent working through the feelings of loss that typically accompany the infertility process so the couple can embrace the adoption process without any regret. Infertility and adoption support can help a couple do just that.

Types of Adoption

Another reason to consult an infertility and adoption support group for this critical decision is to help a couple work through the many different types of adoption to find the best one for their family. Some couples will opt for a domestic infant adoption, which usually entails meeting the biological mother face to face before the birth of the baby and maybe even forging a long term relationship with her. Since the idea of open adoption is a scary one to many couples new to the process, it is a good idea to talk to an infertility and adoption support group that can help put those fears to rest.

Other couples choose an international adoption, which involves adopting a child from another country. While parents are working with an orphanage in many cases rather than a biological parent, it can be very intimidating to work with another country on such a personal transaction.

Infertility and adoption support groups can advise couples on what they need to know before working with the different countries that provide this adoption option. They can also offer emotional support as couples go through the long and often difficult wait before they can travel overseas to get their child.

Adoption is one way that many couples choose to resolve their infertility challenge and build their family. An infertility and adoption support group can help with every step of the process.
www.howtoresolveinfertility.com

Our mission and purpose is to educate, support, and empower families and individuals at any stage of the process who choose to use egg donation to build a family.

PVED offers information regarding agencies, legal and medical professionals, treatment centers, mental health therapists, pharmaceutical companies, and other resources.

We are asked how PVED came to be – after many years of struggling with infertility, our founder, Marna Gatlin, discovered that the technology to have a child through egg donation was available. Marna was curious, excited, and above all, hopeful that this process might be the conduit to finally achieving my lifelong dream of becoming a parent.

As she began her quest to learn about egg donation, Marna quickly became frustrated by the lack of information available about this particular assisted reproduction technology. What Marna needed was education and support, but it seemed she was on her own.

Finally, while scouring the Internet, Marna happened to find a small e-mail listserv called Mothers via Egg Donation, or MVED. It was this group that became her lifeline throughout the process of conceiving her son, and eventually became its primary moderator.

MVED now has over 1,100 members who share clinic, donor agency, medication, mental health, and other information about egg donation on a daily basis. Members discuss Society of Assisted Reproduction (SART) success rates and statistics as well as American Society of Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) guidelines in order to gain a better understanding of the procedures and protocols involved in this complex infertility treatment.

In addition—and perhaps most importantly—MVED provides a much-needed forum for emotional support among people who find themselves faced with the overwhelming and often difficult prospect of needing third-party help to conceive a child.

Over time, we began to be approached by traditional parents, single mothers, and fathers, as well as gay and lesbian couples who wanted to know where they fit into the arena of people who choose egg donation. These individuals didn’t feel like they had any means of receiving support, getting educated, or becoming empowered. They felt isolated.

Taking into account these concerns—as well as the realistic fact that MVED, while an important resource, is simply a group of people sharing anecdotal information in order to help one another—Marna decided to create an organization that would embrace every parent who had chosen egg donation to grow their family. And she took the idea a step further: this resource would be a global resource for unbiased, timely, and accurate information about egg donation, eliminating the need to search far and wide for piecemeal information and answers.

PVED was born.

www.eprhealthcarenews.com

As soon as the 2ww begins, you’re soooooooo in tune with your body. It’s like everything’s under a magnifying glass. Are my breasts sore? You put your hands on them to make sure. Is the smell of (fill in the blank) making me sick? COOL! Didn’t I just go to the restroom a few minutes ago… quick lookup… frequent urination? YES! Another sure sign… And then you remember that it’s only been about half-a-day since your IUI, IVF or natural attempt… Hey, only 13-1/2 more days to go.

A good thing to do at this time is to take care of yourself as if you are pregnant. Get enough rest, eat healthy foods, take your folic acid. Fantasize about things that make you happy – enjoy it now, who knows what will be at the end of the two weeks?

So you’ve gotten through the first few days? The next step is the bargaining step. You think to yourself, “I won’t test at least until the (fill in the blank-th) day” or “I am waiting for the blood test.” And the days eventually go by, they have to. Slowly, but they do… You read up on how long it takes until the sperm meets the egg, how long it takes for the fertilized egg to travel from the fallopian tube to the uterus, how long it takes for implantation. You wonder if implantation bleeding is real or a myth. Is it a good sign or a bad sign (whether you have it or not)? Once 7 or 8 days have passed, you realize implantation really could have occurred.

The magnifying glass now acquires a high-powered-lamp and a super-sonic microphone system to go along with it. I crave pickles. And chocolate ice cream. And I am so tired. All the time. My breasts are sore. They must be sore. And my jeans don’t fit the way they did yesterday. Or… maybe this is all in my head…

By day 10, the bargaining usually begins again, along with the thoughts, “If I test now, it’s still probably too early… that means I can test now & it’s still not final… So, if it’s negative, I still have a chance…” Some women break down about here. Some last another few days and some make it through the whole two weeks.

Toward the very end, it gets a little easier. By then you’ve pretty much decided if you are or aren’t pregnant and taking the test means you’re actually ready to know for sure. My guess is that every woman, even if she’s “sure” she’s pregnant, is at least a little worried that the test will be negative… and that will end the fantasy.

In this, the age of impatience, many of the searches for Fertility Stories have to do with pregnancy symptoms. Cramping after IUI; not nauseous pregnant; if my breasts are sore am I pregnant; faint pink line pregnancy; no symptoms pregnancy; IVF implantation bleeding… if you think about it, it makes sense. A letter that used to take a week is now an email that takes 10 seconds. News that you waited until 5:00pm to hear is on the Internet instantly. You can check your bank account to make sure your check was deposited even if you only think about it at 2:15am and if you need your addressed changed on something, you send a fax so they can change it right away… so why does it have to take 2 whole weeks to find out if you’re pregnant???

This is where this blog entry actually ends… If you want to read on, feel free.

My experience

I (see my story here) went through this (the rotten two week wait) oh… about 50 times, I’d say (maybe more). Each time I’d think it couldn’t be so bad to wait two weeks & each time discovered anew that two weeks can be an eternity. With the first pregnancy (from IVF), my breasts were so tender by the 9th day that I couldn’t sleep on my stomach. It was back in the olden days when they made you wait 20 days – by day 19, I felt so awful that I called the nurse and told her I thought I was coming down with the flu. She asked me what I was feeling and sent me for a blood test. It came back late that night. My beta was 2500.

With the second pregnancy (IVF – frozen embryo transfer), I had bleeding before the 14 days were up, so I had my sister run and get me a home pregnancy test on day 12. It was positive. I assumed the bleeding was a sign that it wasn’t going to succeed & I was shocked on day 14 to find that my beta was 599 (I was to later discover that I was expecting twins). In both cases, I have to admit that I felt “something” that was getting stronger and stronger.

My 3rd IVF pregnancy didn’t start well (and didn’t end well). My beta was 29 & there was a huge hematoma (blood clot) in the uterus. I miscarried sometime around the 13th week (after several weeks of bleeding heavily on & off).

Ironically, my 2ww was much shorter than expected with my last pregnancy – I was in my first cycle after delivering my daughter, exclusively breastfeeding, and I thought the chance of pregnancy was fairly low. I had what I thought were either pre-menstrual cramps or ovulation, so I took an ovulation test (I sell discount kits out of my home) and it was positive, so I guessed I was finally ovulating… A week later, I was feeling tired and just generally different. Without thinking, I took a pregnancy test upstairs, put my baby in her crib (she was all of 4-1/2 months) and took the test, which was immediately positive (no waiting a minute, no faint pink line). I was in shock. So was my husband, when I was finally able to tell him about half-an-hour later. I decided to kill my business selling ovulation kits & pregnancy tests if the test was wrong. The next day, I took a test made by a different company (I get free samples too…) and it was positive even before I put it down on the counter… It turned out that I was 6 weeks pregnant. (I didn’t kill the business )

www.fertilitystories.com

The findings show that the use of frozen embryos could soon be accepted as completely safe, doctors said.

Another team of researchers told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona that IVF success rates could be improved by as much as 15 per cent with a “viability index” for selecting embryos with the best chance of a healthy pregnancy.

The Danish study into frozen embryos found that the average birth weight of those babies was 200g more than in fresh-embryo IVF.

The findings, from a team led by Anja Pinborg, of the Copenhagen University Hospital, are important because women are increasingly encouraged to use one fresh embryo — to avoid multiple births — and to freeze any others produced in the process for later use.

Dr Pinborg said it was highly unlikely that freezing improved the health of embryos. The figures could be explained because patients who froze embryos were generally young women with a good prognosis. Poor quality embryos were also more likely to die during the thawing process.

“These findings are reassuring,” she told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona. “If our results continue to be positive, frozen embryo replacement can be accepted as a completely safe procedure, which can be used even more frequently.”

Scientists from Yale University told the conference that overall IVF success rates could be improved by as much as 15 per cent by a new “fitness test” that can predict which IVF embryos will implant into the womb up to 70 per cent of the time.

The non-invasive procedure examines chemical fingerprints in the culture media in which they grow in the laboratory. Scientists said the technology, known as metabolomics, should be ready for widespread use within two to three years, and predicted that the viability index could become a routine part of fertility treatment.

Denny Sakkas, who is leading the research, said: “The other side of IVF is that we probably fail to get patients pregnant about two thirds of the time we do an embryo transfer. One of the reasons is we’re not that good at picking the best embryo we have available.

“In the clinic, we would probably be looking at a 10 to 15 per cent improvement in pregnancy rates.

“It’s not going to make a bad embryo good, but it should help us to tell them apart. This definitely could make the difference between people getting pregnant or not.”

The average success rate for IVF in Britain is 21.6 per cent across women of all ages, and 29.6 per cent for women under 35.

There is no evidence that acupuncture during IVF treatment does anything to improve women’s chances of having a baby, the most extensive review yet has concluded. Sesh Sunkara, who led the research at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, told the conference: “If women come to me and ask if they should have acupuncture, I have to say there is no evidence that it helps.” She said more trials were needed to settle the issue.

www.timesonline.co.uk

A 61-year-old woman gave birth to her own grandchild using an egg donated by her daughter, a clinic in Japan has said.
The surrogate mother is believed to be oldest woman to have given birth in Japan.

“Both surrogate mother and baby were fine,” said a spokesman for the Suwa Maternity Clinic who added the surrogate mother used a fertilised egg donated by her daughter, who has no uterus.

Media reports state the previous oldest mothers in Japan were two 60-year-old women implanted with their own fertilised eggs in America

www.clitheroeadvertiser.co.uk

Photo by blogs.babycenter.com

Intracytoplasmic sperm injection, where a whole sperm is injected straight into an egg cell, has become a popular option for infertile couples for whom traditional IVF has failed. But the success rate is still low. “In most infertility clinics, only three of 10 couples bring babies home after ICSI,” says Ryuzo Yanagimachi at the University of Hawaii School of Medicine, US..

Yanagimachi and his colleague Kazuto Morozumi, also at the school, wanted to assess the potential hazards of sperm cap enzymes on developing mouse embryos. This is because, with natural fertilisations, the chemicals in this cap, or acrosome, would never enter the egg cell: the powerful hydrolysing enzymes are used to break down the egg’s cell wall. For certain animals – such as the golden hamster, which has a particularly large acrosome – ICSI always fails unless the cap is removed.

So the researchers injected mouse eggs with varying numbers of mouse sperm, either with or without the acrosome. They also injected eggs with acrosome-like enzymes. After seven hours, none of the subsequent embryos injected with acrosome-free sperm were deformed – even when up to seven sperm had been injected.

But when just three fully-intact sperm were injected, one-third of the resultant embryos were extensively deformed. With eight to 12 intact sperm being injected, the figure rose to 100%. Pure enzyme injections caused similar levels of malformation.

Tail mashing

Humans and mice have relatively small acrosomes. Removing them in human fertility labs is not crucial for successful fertilisation, since with ICSI only one sperm is ever injected. But Yanagimachi hopes that by removing the acrosome the success rate will increase in humans.

However, ICSI developer Gianpiero Palermo at the Weill Medical College, Cornell University, US, is not convinced. He says that the process of sperm immobilisation, where the sperm tail is mashed prior to injection, disrupts the cell membrane and results in the acrosome bursting. Acrosome enzymes, therefore, rarely enter the egg cell and are not likely to be the cause of lower ICSI success rates, he says.

But, says Yanagimachi, it takes around 30 minutes to ensure that acrosomes have been disrupted after the sperms tail has been crushed. Sperm are usually injected immediately after their tail-squashing. And he notes that electron micrographs have turned up images of acrosomes inside ICSI embryos.

A recently as 20 years ago, some in the medical community were still using the male body as their research prototype and extrapolating for women..

Any pregnant woman who has ever cracked open a medicine cabinet is familiar with the warnings against using nearly every kind of medication, including those sold over the counter, from the moment of conception onward. Yet each year in the U.S., some 500,000 pregnant women battle psychiatric illness, cancer, autoimmune disease, influenza and other conditions that require treatment. Leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether the benefits of certain drugs outweigh the risks to the baby, what is the appropriate dosage for a mom-to-be? Given the shifts in her metabolism, how much she should take is often anyone’s guess.

In the event of an anthrax scare, for example, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that pregnant women take amoxicillin. But an obstetrics researcher in Seattle recently concluded there’s no way to give a pregnant woman enough of the antibiotic to be effective. Kidney function is so revved up during pregnancy that even in high doses, amoxicillin is excreted before it can work its magic. Think of it as trying to fill a bathtub with the drain open, suggests Jason Umans, an internist and maternal-fetal pharmacologist at Georgetown University. “In emergencies, you always hear, ‘Treat the pregnant women first!’” he says. “The joke should be ‘Yeah, how?’” (See how the FDA classifies drugs and their effects on pregnancy.)

To start formulating an answer, an élite group of some 30 doctors, ethicists, scientists and government officials gathered in Washington this spring to launch a movement they’re calling the Second Wave of clinical research. (The first happened in the early ’90s, when studies began to include large numbers of women.) A conclave of maternal-health advocates is now pushing for better information on how drugs affect pregnant women.

A recently as 20 years ago, some in the medical community were still using the male body as their research prototype and extrapolating for women. The approach, as summarized by Anne Drapkin Lyerly, an obstetrician and bioethicist at Duke University, was “If you happen to have boobs and a uterus, then we’ll adjust things.”

Because drugmakers now include women and, thanks to a 2003 law, children in appropriate drug studies, Second Wave organizers are hoping to push federal agencies to gather more data on pregnant women — what they’re taking and with what effects — and draw more blood samples so doctors can prescribe an effective dosage rather than winging it.

“Everyone thinks, Oh, my God, research on pregnant women! All kinds of ethical flags go up,” says Ruth Faden, director of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. “We don’t have to start with high drama.” There’s enough “low-hanging fruit,” she says, “that we could keep lots of medical researchers busy for a long time.”

Chronic illnesses like depression, diabetes and hypertension don’t magically disappear during pregnancy. And as women delay childbearing, more moms-to-be are struggling with cancer. So it’s hardly surprising that two-thirds of women take up to five drugs over the course of their pregnancy and labor. Yet only a dozen prescription drugs are approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during pregnancy, and they’re all pregnancy-related: drugs for inducing labor, for example, or epidural anesthesia. Which means patients with many common conditions face an excruciating dilemma: decline medication whose effects on a fetus may be largely unknown or take it and worry about the consequences.

See the most common hospital mishaps.

See the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2008.

www.time.com

The rate of repeat abortions has increased remorselessly over the past decade as more and more women have fallen back on abortion to end unwanted pregnancies.

Numbers of repeat terminations rose last year even as the overall count fell for the first time in a decade.

There were 195,296 abortions in England and Wales in 2008, a 1.6 per cent fall on the 198,499 in the previous year.

The fall was a surprise to pressure groups from both pro-life and pro-choice sides of the controversy over abortion, who had expected numbers to top 200,000.

Pro-abortion groups said the drop was a success for the Government’s troubled Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, while the anti-abortion lobby said women are becoming more concerned aboukt the cruelty of destroying a foetus.

However the rise in numbers of women who have had two or more abortions suggests that many women regard abortion as a necessary convenience when contraception fails.

The numbers released by the Department of Health showed that 33 per cent of women had a second or further abortion, compared with 29 per cent in 1998.

Nearly a quarter, 24 per cent, of women under 25 who had abortions were going through a repeat abortion.

Those who had undergone two abortions include 1,448 girls under 18. There were 2,780 women who had their fourth abortion, and 1,121 who had five or more.

The figures also showed that 73 per cent of abortions were carried out before 10 weeks of pregnancy, a rise of three per cent in early abortions.

Phyllis Bowman of Right to Life said: ‘This is further evidence that GPS who are concerned that abortion is being used as a form of contraception are correct. Those ministers who are congratulating themselves  because the total of abortions has gone down should be finding a way to stop this.’

Michaela Aston from the charity Life, said: ‘This reduction in the number of abortions is definitely positive news and reason for hope.

‘While there are still far too many abortions, the small decrease in numbers in nearly every age group suggests that more and more women are recognising the value of their unborn child and seeing that there are positive ways to cope with crisis pregnancy.’

But Julie Bentley of the fpa – formerly the Family Planning Association – said: ‘Abortion is a critical option  for women facing an unwanted pregnancy and we welcome the news that more women needing abortion have access to it earlier.’

Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said: ‘It is good news that the number of abortions, including for those under 18 and under 16, has fallen since 2007.

dailymail.co.uk