With today’s technology, it’s possible for couples who are trying to get pregnant to do so using a variety of methods. Starting a family successfully still remains a bit topic of womens health, especially for women who desperately want to have children. Luckily, being infertile isn’t a guarantee that you’ll never have a family as it may have been in earlier years. Today, there are several infertility solutions you can look at it: taking medicine, having surgery, completing intra-uterine insemination, or using assisted reproductive technology like in vitro fertilization.
What Are Causes of Infertility In Women?
In some cases, doctors aren’t sure what causes infertility for certain women. However, a quarter of infertility cases is due to ovulation issues, like hormone imbalances. Endometriosis or uterine problems can also contribute to infertility. Factors like doing drugs or smoking even five cigarettes a day can also lower a person’s fertility rate. Secondary infertility also exists, which is when a couple with a child is not able to conceive again after a year has gone by. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that about 11% of couples experience this.
What Are The Options Available For Women Who Are Experiencing Infertility?
First of all, women who are 35 years old or younger should try and get pregnant for a year before going to the doctor or other healthcare professional. Many young couples don’t go to the doctor for a couple years once they first start trying.
Two of the most commonly heard of methods are intra-uterine insemination and in vitro fertilization. The terms sound complex, but the ideas behind them are really pretty simple. In essence, intra-uterine insemination is a two part process. The first part is done in a lab and separates quickly moving sperm from sperm that are slower or not moving at all. When a woman is close to ovulation and the egg is about to be released from the ovary, the quickly moving sperm are planted in her womb. This increases the chances of fertilization by weeding out the useless sperm and ensuring that the sperm are closer to the egg to begin with. Success rates of course depend on the couple’s age and the fertility problem at hand, but it has a 5 to 20% success rate on average.
In vitro fertilization is used as a treatment for women experiencing infertility and also for surrogate mothers who carry a child to term for another mother who cannot have a child. In vitro fertilization is defined as a process where a sperm inseminates an egg outside of the woman’s body, usually in glass (hence the name, “in vitro”). Eggs and sperm are removed from respective bodies and come together in liquid under a laboratory’s watchful eye. If the egg becomes fertilized, it’s monitored for another 2-6 days and then implanted in the uterus where it hopefully come to term in the form of a child.
The modern medical world has a host of answers for women who are experiencing infertility and most of them are encouraging. Looking into one of these infertility treatments is advised only after speaking with a doctor or healthcare professional first.