Professional advice for your fertility questions

When you're trying unsuccessfully to conceive, there are often so many questions and concerns that spring to your mind that you may not always feel able to bother your clinic or your consultant with all your niggling worries. Many women resort to asking one another questions about what it is and isn't OK to do when you're trying to conceive on the many online fertility forums, but one of the problems with this is that you'll often receive misleading or even plain inaccurate advice.

What many couples don't realise is that the charity Infertility Network UK offers all its members access to a professional advice line where you can contact a medical profesisonal with all your little worries and queries, safe in the knowledge that you won't be getting anything but the best advice from someone who not only gets their medical facts right, but also understands infertility and knows just how you are feeling and why you have so many questions.

It's not expensive to join Infertility Network UK, and I'd always advise taking out membership to anyone who is trying to conceive. Not only will you benefit yourself in terms of access to information and support, but you'll also be helping to back the campaigning work of the charity as it tries to raise awareness of infertility and of the inequities in the way treatment is currently funded.

Fertility funding in Northern Ireland

Members of the Assembly in Northern Ireland have passed a motion calling on the Health Minister to fund three cycles of IVF treatment. At present, anyone eligible for funded fertility treatment in Northern Ireland will only get one attempt at IVF paid for by the health service. In England NHS funding can vary, but in Scotland couples get three cycles and in Wales they get two. The guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommend that those who are eligible should be offered up to three full cycles of treatment.

It is great news that the Assembly is considering the issue, and that members are minded to call for more funding for fertility. The campaigning work carried out by Infertility Network UK in Ireland is sure to have helped bring this issue to the forefront.

Healthy diet, healthy sperm...

New research from the States has found that men who have a diet high in saturated fat have considerably lower sperm counts. The researchers followed men attending a fertility clinic and analysed their diet and their sperm over a period of time. It became clear that those who ate more unsaturated fat had markedly lower sperm counts than average, and that those who had diets which were high in omega-3 fatty acids, found in fish and plant oils, had higher sperm counts. However, it is important to note that many of those who ate more saturated fat were also overweight, and many of the participants in the study were classified as obese and this could also be playing a part.

What is very apparent is that maintaining a healthy diet and keeping within normal weight parameters is definitely important when it comes to male fertility. All too often, it is assumed that women are the ones who need to make all the lifestyle changes when a couple experiences difficulty conceiving, but this research shows that men need to make just as much effort!

You can find details of the study, published in Human Reproduction, here

One at a Time

Earlier this week, I spoke at a workshop in Bristol organised by One at a Time about patient views about single embryo transfer. I know many people are worried that having just one embryo put back during IVF treatment will reduce the chances of success, but all the research shows that when clinics are selecting the right patients for single embryo transfer, it is quite possible to cut risk of multiple pregnancies without reducing the pregnancy rate.

The speaker who made the most impact on me was paediatrician Alun Elias-Jones, who talked about the problems of prematurity that he had frequently seen with multiple births. We all know so many twins who are perfectly fine that it's easy to assume that problems are relatively rate, but it was made very clear that this was far from the case with half of all twins being born early and often having low birth weights too, which can lead to all kinds of problems including brain injury, lung disease and cardiovascular problems. He explained that twins were three times more likely to be stillborn, five times more likely to die during their first year and four to six times more likely to have cerebral palsy. It was his description of the longer term problems that they can face with disabilities, learning difficulties and behavioural issues which was particularly striking. It's all too easy for staff in fertility clinics not to think about these potential consequences, and to pass on an ambiguous message to patients.

Going through fertility treatment isn't easy and all anyone wants is for it to work as quickly as possible. If you've got a team treating you who are all clear that the best outcome would be one healthy baby, it's something you're going to believe yourself. If you are faced with divided opinions or with some staff seeming to suggest that multiple birth might not be a bad outcome, it is hardly surprising that we sometimes end up confused.

Of course, there's one thing which really would make a difference to patient opinion and that would be the full implementation of the NICE guideline, which says that all those who are eligible should receive up to three full cycles of IVF. With adequate funding, it would be far easier to convince patients that all those most at risk of multiple pregnancy should consider having just one embryo put back at a time.