• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

How to get Pregnant

I was always told it was something to do with birds and bees. I never quite worked out what to do with them though.
 
LostAngeles said:
I seem to recall that for women to keep a regular cycle, they need a certain amount of body fat (and Barbie doesn't have that)... maybe that explains the 10 pounds?
Click to expand...


Yes, women need a certain amount of body fat to keep the menstrual cycle going. However, underweight isn't a very large problem in America.

According to NIH, 28.6% of women are overweight, 33.2% are obese, and 35.4% are at a healthy weight. Just by numbers alone, I have to disagree with the doctor in the OP who says women are "too fit". Even if some of the healthy weight women are at the low end of their healthy weight, we still aren't talking about a large number of women total.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
Yes, women need a certain amount of body fat to keep the menstrual cycle going. However, underweight isn't a very large problem in America.

According to NIH, 28.6% of women are overweight, 33.2% are obese, and 35.4% are at a healthy weight. Just by numbers alone, I have to disagree with the doctor in the OP who says women are "too fit". Even if some of the healthy weight women are at the low end of their healthy weight, we still aren't talking about a large number of women total.
Click to expand...

But remember that these are women who are having problems conceiving, not the population in general. It could well be that many of the women he sees are too fit.

They are not a representative sample of the entire population
 
Katana said:
The first issue to address with any infertile woman is not to tell her to put on weight. Let's get that straight unless she is obviously underweight, which the majority of American patients are not. For a woman in the normal weight range, this will not improve her fertility. Obesity is a big risk factor for infertility for a variety of reasons, so weight loss is recommended for these patients.

Having said all of that, the first question to ask is: Are you having unprotected sex? And, if so, how often?

It's incredible how many couples come in complaining of having tried to get pregnant for over a year and then reveal that they both travel for business, are only in the same place maybe one or two days each week, and may or may not take advantage of those opportunities.

no sex = no baby

Depending on the response to that question, a great many others follow.

Extreme stress can certainly affect the menstrual cycle and fertility. Day-to-day stress, however, is ubiquitous. Quantifying it is hard as is assessing its impact on fertility. There are so many anecdotal accounts of couples giving up on infertility treatments, going on a trip, and the woman comes back pregnant. However, there are certainly many other couples who don't experience this phenomenon. It's wonderful when that happens, but it is difficult to study. The literature on the subject is, as a result, weak.
Click to expand...

Maybe reducing stress and taking time off leads to more frequent sex to ejaculation?
 
Ben Tilly said:
This I've never heard. It seems strange to me. I won't say it is impossible though. There are plenty of mechanisms that I can postulate for the effect. For instance this might tie with the other one - women who find it easy to add the 10 pounds were previously putting themselves under stress keeping those 10 pounds off. So this advice is really a variation of "relax".
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. The role of body fat in regulation of female hormones is fairly well known; and hormone inbalances/irregularity can definitely affect fertility. Many professional female body builders say that their menstrual cycle stops completely once they get down to their competition weight.

Being that I've heard the "gain a few pounds" comments from other medical sources with regards to increasing fertility, I'd certainly buy it as valid.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
I hate the "relax" mantra. My sis-in-law had all kinds of fertility problems, in part due to the fact that she's a DES daughter. So after years of fertility treatments they gave up and adopted. Two years later, she got pregnant and everybody said "oh, it's because you finally relaxed." Or...maybe the fact that she lost 50 pounds. Given that one fertility doctor actually told her that the treatments would be more effective if she lost weight, I'm gonna go with the second one.
Click to expand...

I have seen and heard a lot of anecdotal evidence that less stress has made a difference.

I have no doubt it does play a part, but the whole nature of the probabilities involved means that someone who is trying for a long time will possibly conceive during a period of less stress anyway. It is something that is just so hard to measure.

I also have no doubt that many of the treatments that are available pre-IVF , may put the women (and man) under additional stress, so if stress was a factor, it could be adding to the problem.

In the UK (in my experience anyway) IVF is a huge cost issue to the NHS, and there seems to be a willingness to put the couple through many of the cheaper treatments even though they may not necessarily be required or advantageous, as there is a chance the couple may conceive naturally during that period anyway.

The use of fertility predictors is widespread as well, and they can add to the pressure to 'perform' on certain dates. It is interesting that many professionals and fertility experts seem to totally discount the use of fertility predictors. I seen Robert Winstone say 'they don't work' on television again recently. So people could actually be concentrating on having sex on particular dates, which might not be the fertility sweet spot.
 
kittynh said:
or just going on vacation to a BEACH instead of that Star Trek Convention (yes, he said that), can give your body the signal that it's baby time.
Click to expand...

I don't know about a beach, but Mrs. L and I had been trying for about three months with no luck. Then, one day, we went to Sea World.

Seven months* later, the BorgMonkey clawed her way out of Mommy's tummy and demanded to be fed, clothed, cuddled and worshipped.



*She was born two months early.

Marc
 
The whole bit about relaxing is probably less to do with hormonal status and more to do with opportunity.

As mentioned above, stressed-out couples tend to have one or both partners in lifestyles where opportunity for sex is limited to 15 minutes scheduled between waking and breakfast on alternating Saturdays, for example.

To stress out less involves lifestyle changes - more time for relaxing, thus providing opportunities to have more sex. (And not just more sex, but better sex!) More sex = better chance of pregnancy. Too simple.

Diversions are a good method too. By concentrating on something else besides getting pregnant, stuff just happens.

Zeplette was like this. We had been trying for a short while, but without luck. So we decided to travel overseas instead that year. And in the middle of the fun of making extensive travel arrangements...touchdown! So we deferred the travel a year, and a seven-month-old Zeplette went with us!
 
Marc L said:
Yes, believe it or not :)

Ok, she really wasn't, but the extended pun was too good to pass up.

Marc
Click to expand...

I was born at the beginning of August, 1979. My father took my mom to see Alien in theaters.

I'm amazed they stayed together long enough to have my sister...
 
Ben Tilly said:
Based on current research, having dad keep the cellphone away from private parts might be a good thing as well. (The connection with both items is that they increase temperature in your testicles. Temperature matters. Sensitive spots are exposed because they need to be below body temperature...)
Click to expand...


I'm going to need to see some citations before I believe that one. Not the claim that temperature matters, the claim that cell phones can increase temperature in one's testicles.
 
Wavicle said:
Since we're probably talking about someone from either North America or Western Europe, I think the answer to that question is: Infertility here has essentially no impact on world population. Most western nations only have a growing population because of immigration. It hardly seems fair that westerners, who can provide an excellent environment for their children, should not receive fertility treatments because families in third world countries are so large.

If we disregard for a moment "correlation doesn't show causation" then it would seem that if we really wanted to do something about the world's population, we'd spend lots of money educating women in the third world (which in itself certainly sounds like a noble goal).
Click to expand...

But World population is not the problem, impact of population on resources is.The Western world has a foot print that accounts for about half of the world's consumption. Adding one Westerner is about as dangerous as 20 third worlders. We must first remove the beam from our own eye.
 
Marc L said:
I don't know about a beach, but Mrs. L and I had been trying for about three months with no luck. Then, one day, we went to Sea World.

Seven months* later, the BorgMonkey clawed her way out of Mommy's tummy and demanded to be fed, clothed, cuddled and worshipped.



*She was born two months early.

Marc
Click to expand...

Hate to be a spoilsport, but three months isn't much. If I remember correctly, you're not advised to seek a doctor until you have tried for at least one year without success.

After all, you usually have just a couple of days each month available. So, if you look at it from the perspective of the business world, it only took a week or thereabouts of "office days" before things went right.
 
a_unique_person said:
Don't forget the part the man has to play in all of this. What can I say, each time 'we' got pregnant, it didn't seem too hard ;).
Click to expand...

You remind me of my great-aunt. Every time in (my) living memory a new grandchild of hers was on the way, she announced that "we are pregnant again".


I agree with you, though, that we guys clearly have the easy part in this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom