Reproductive medicine has been around for centuries now. In fact the first known book on gynecology and obstetrics, 'The Complete Book of Effective Prescriptions for Diseases of Women', was published in China in 1237 A.D. This area of medicine and science has received worldwide attention from doctors, physicians and alternative medicine practitioners.
In the last few decades infertility has been on the rise, while some blame this trend on high levels of stress experienced by couples others consider sexual and reproductive health or ill health to be the main cause of worry. Despite the general belief that inability to get pregnant is solely related to women's reproductive health, researchers now believe that both the woman's and the male reproductive system may be responsible for infertility. In a fair number of cases fertilization may not occur due to unknown causes.
If you have been trying to conceive for more than a year and are unable to, it may be time to consider visiting a reproductive health center and for your partner to have a male sperm test. Reproduction medicine may be able to identify the cause of the problem and appropriate reproductive medicines may be able to help create fertile conditions for pregnancy.
The physician you go to see about your symptoms of female infertility may suggest some life changes to take place before looking into further infertility treatments. You may be asked to lose or gain weight, stop smoking, avoid caffeine and alcohol and stay away from excessive exercise. The doctor will also look at your ovulation chart and ask you to plan your sexual activity according to when you are ovulating.
Additional Steps
If the life changes the doctor asks you to make don't help you to conceive, you will be given the option of taking fertility medications. These infertility treatments are used to cause ovulation to occur and there is a strong likelihood of a multiple birth.
Should the fertility problems remain there is the option of surgery. Your fallopian tubes may be blocked. Surgery may be required to remove cysts, fibroids and scar tissue. You may even require endometriosis treatment. Sometimes surgery still won't be able to fix the problem and you will need to go to the next step.
Assisted Reproductive Technologies
The use of assisted reproductive technologies is used by taking human sperm and eggs or embryos in a lab to help with the conception process. This is really the last resort of infertility treatments. The eggs and sperm found in the laboratory can be from you and your partner or they can be donated by other people.
As part of your infertility treatments program you may decide to participate with artificial insemination. This is when semen is collected and processed within the laboratory and then is inserted directly into your cervix or uterus.
In vitro fertilization (ivf) is the process where an egg is removed from the female and is mixed with fresh donor semen. Once the strict embryo criteria has been met and the infertility treatment team deems the mixture to be an embryo, it is then transferred to women undergoing infertility treatment. For an infertility specialist this is one of several common treatments and many women participate in this procedure.
There are other options as well including frozen embryo transfers and alternative infertility treatments. There is also the situation where there are issues with male fertility.
Mike O'Brien offers advice and information about a male sperm test.. This is a quality web site that has a wide selection of male and female infertility information at your fingertips!