The New Breed Mama Speaks out on Infertility

Today, I’ve decided to be brave. Today, I’ve decided to blog on a very sensitive topic; a topic that hits close to home for me and many other women throughout the United States and the world. According to the American Pregnancy Association, http://www.americanpregnancy.org/main/statistics.html, there are 60 million women every year between the child bearing ages of fifteen to forty-four. Of those, six million women deal with infertility. There are approximately 2 million married couples who deal with infertility annually.

Although the causes of infertility vary, the emotions associated with infertility seem to be similar for many women. Infertility can lead to depression, anxiety, and a host of other physical and emotional issues. Many women feel “defective” and blame themselves for the fertility issues. This can create a cycle where the negative emotions women often feel as a result of infertility can in turn cause undue stress on the woman’s body and natural hormonal cycles, thereby perpetuating the infertility problems.

The causes of infertility could be physical, emotional, or even environmental. The infertile partner may be the male or the female. For more information about causes of infertility check out the following links:

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/infertility/ds00310/dsection=causes

http://www.ehealthmd.com/library/infertility/inf_causes.html

Infertility treatments for women often involve medications to stimulate menses (progesterone) and induce ovulation in women (clomiphene citrate). These medications can exaggerate the already intense emotions that infertile women experience. Woman taking a fertility medication like clomid find themselves spending a great number of hours charting their cycle. Fertility specialists often advise women to chart their Basil Body Temperature every morning and use other techniques such as monitoring of the consistency of cervical mucus as a means to predict ovulation. Some women opt to buy Ovulation Predictor kits to, well, to predict ovulation.

Couples struggling with infertility typically spend the first two weeks of a cycle charting temperatures, taking medications, and planning for “the big O”, which in the fertility community means ovulation. When that most important time arrives, the couple focuses their attention on ‘baby dancing’. After ovulation, the couple (mostly the female partner) then spends the next two weeks, the ‘two week wait’, agonizing over ever little physical symptom that might, just maybe, be a sign a pregnancy. Then, when those two weeks are up, it is time for the woman to POAS or ‘pee on a stick’ to see if the couple has achieved a BFP ‘big fat positive’ or if they have to, once again, face the dreaded BFN ‘big fat negative’.

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Some Common Infertility Acronyms:

TTC – Trying to Conceive
The Big O – Ovulation
BD – Baby Dance
BFP – Big Fat Positive
BFN – Big Fat Negative
OPK- Ovulation Predictor Kit
CM – Cervical Mucus
TWW – Two week wait
POAS – Pee on a stick
PCOS – Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
MFI – Male Factor Infertility
IVF – In vitro Fertilization
IUI – Intrauterine Insemination