What You Need to Know About Infertility Treatments

If you and your partner have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant, you may be wondering if infertility treatments could help you.  But it’s not as simple as just making an appointment and getting a prescription.  Here’s what you need to know about infertility treatments, and the process that goes along with it.

First off, if you’ve only been trying to get pregnant for a few months, your regular doctor probably won’t even refer you to a specialist to talk to someone about infertility treatments.  Most doctors want to see that you’ve been trying to conceive for about 12 months before they will give you a referral.  This is because a lot of couples panic when they don’t get pregnant right away (like in the first two months of trying) and then want infertility treatments right away, when all they really needed was to try for a little longer.  If you’ve been trying to get pregnant consistently for at least a year, then chances are something isn’t working right.

Secondly, when you do go to see a specialist about infertility treatment, both the man and the woman will need to be examined.  Back in our less-than-equal past, the blame for not being able to conceive and carry a baby to term fell squarely on the shoulders of the woman alone, but now we know that a lot of couples who need infertility treatment need it because of either a low sperm count, or complete infertility in the man.

Once you’ve both been through testing, the results will tell your doctor what kind of infertility treatments you and your partner may need. If the male has a low sperm count, the doctor may suggest medications to help raise it, as well as timing intercourse carefully to give the sperm that are present the best chance.  If the sperm count is extremely low, the doctor may suggest IVF, or in vitro fertilization, where the sperm and egg are combined outside the body and then implanted in the woman afterwards.

If difficulty in conceiving lies with the woman, there are more things that could be causing it.  She could not be releasing eggs, or there could also be problem with the environment within the womb that doesn’t allow the fertilized egg to implant.  Traditional infertility treatments can be as simple as a few hormone injections, or as invasive as harvesting the eggs and then implanting the resulting embryos into a surrogate.  Make sure that you know all of your options, and discuss it at length with your partner before deciding which infertility treatment is right for you.

For more information on infertility treatments that are effective, and don’t involve hormones or surgery, go to Top Tips For Getting Pregnant.