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.

Thanks to Herts and Essex Fertility Centre

I just wanted to thank the team at Herts and Essex Fertility Centre for inviting me along as a guest speaker this evening to talk about coping with the emotional aspects of infertility and treatment. I was amazed to see such a good turnout - and especially impressed at how many men had turned up on a night when England were playing a football match! It was great to meet so many really lovely people and to be able to share experiences, and I hope that other clinics will be inspired by the guest speaker programme at Herts and Essex as it's a brilliant idea and clearly much appreciated by patients.

I may not be a mother, but I'm still a person

If you didn't see it, take a look at this article from yesterday's Observer. It's the story of a woman in her forties who doesn't have children, and explains how marginalised she often feels as a result of her childlessness. She discusses how all-consuming the role of motherhood has become in our society, and how it can leave those who don't have children feeling ostracised and isolated.

It may surprise you to know that one in five of the female population in the UK will not have children, as it doesn't always feel that common when you are the lone childless woman in a room full of mothers. Many of us will recognise the feelings of separation from other women who have children, and the awkwardness that can arise at certain social situations. I often suggest that women who are actively trying to get pregnant should simply avoid events which are likely to be particularly difficult, but this isn't a long-term solution if you have accepted a child-free future.

If all this sounds very familiar, you may be interested in a group called Gateway Women set up by the woman featured in the Observer piece which aims to offer support to those in this situation.

Beating the biological clock...

The one hurdle fertility specialists have never been able to overcome is the ageing of human eggs, but now new research from the States suggests that it may be possible to produce eggs in the laboratory using women's stem cells, and these eggs have the capacity to be fertilised.

So far the research has been done on mice, but it could hold the possibility to transform female fertility as it shows that women's ovaries contain stem cells that hold the potential to make new eggs. It is, however, vital to remember that we are still a very long way from being able to offer women the opportunity to overcome their biological clocks - but there is a possibility that there may be new ways to put women on a more equal footing with men when it comes to reproduction at some point in the future.

The new research has been published in the journal Nature.