Tag: infertility

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Khloe Kardashian Shares Infertility Struggles, Kim Wants to Freeze Her Eggs

brigitte

More Kardashian babies on the way?

On Sunday’s episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians, sisters Kim, Kourtney and Khloe all had babies on the brain. Kourtney, who was still pregnant with daughter Penelope at the time, was already talking to boyfriend Scott Disick about having more children.

“I need to see what it’s like when I have two, but [having kids] is what life is about,” Kourtney, 33, explained. “I’m not going on the pill [after giving birth to Penelope]. I don’t believe in it anymore!” Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Conflict Trauma In Kashmir Leads to Infertility, Miscarriage

brigitte

Ishrat Hussain says she locked herself in her room when she learned she could not conceive.

Two years after her wedding and still not pregnant, the 26-year-old visited a gynecologist, who diagnosed her with polycystic ovary syndrome, an endocrine disorder that can cause women to stop ovulating, gain unusual weight, develop irregular periods or skin problems and grow abnormal facial and body hair.

Hussain struggles to describe how people ridiculed her in her community in Kashmir, where infertility is taboo.

“An infertile woman is generally viewed as incomplete with a notion of having a curse bestowed for some misdeed,” she says tearfully.

Dr. Ashraf Ganaie, an endocrinologist at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, says plenty of other women share Hussain’s problem amid the decades-old conflict and related uncertainties of life in the Kashmir Valley, a disputed territory between India and Pakistan.

He says an unpublished study that he supervised attributed 90 percent of infertility cases in the valley to polycystic ovary syndrome and related diseases, 5 percent to premature ovarian failure and another 5 percent to other stressors in life.

“In the last few years, we have received more than 150 women who suffer from premature ovarian failure,” he says.

Clinical psychologist Iram Nazir says that stress can negatively affect women’s hormonal levels. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Involuntary Childlessness

brigitte

Recently, I had a woman struggling with infertility come into my office for counseling. After years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, three miscarriages, and a husband unwilling to consider other family-building options, she is considering giving up her dream of having another child. She wanted to know if she would ever get over her childlessness. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

1/3 of Child Cancer Patients May be Infertile in Adulthood

brigitte

Childhood cancer patients face an uncertain future regarding whether they have remained fertile, and a recent German study makes this abundantly clear.

According to findings published inDeutsches Arzteblatt International, as many as 30 percent of childhood cancer survivors are suspected of being rendered infertile because of their anti-cancer treatments.

Researchers collected data from 2,754 participants (1,476 of whom had been treated for a leukemia subtype, and the rest, for solid tumors). Of those, 210 agreed to undergo fertility testing, and infertility was suspected in thirty percent. Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Fertility Treatments May Put Women at Risk for PTSD Symptoms, Study Suggests

brigitte

Women who undergo fertility treatments may find the situation so distressing that they develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a new study says.

In the study, close to 50 percent of participants met the official criteria for PTSD, meaning they could be diagnosed with the condition.

That’s about six times higher than the percentage of people in the general population who suffer from PTSD (8 percent.)

The findings suggest the definition of PTSD may need to be changed so that its causes include potentially traumatic experiences such as infertility, said study researcher Allyson Bradow, director of psychological services at Home of the Innocents, a nonprofit organization that helps families in need in Louisville, Ky.

Currently, the definition of PTSD says people must have experienced or witnessed a life-threatening event, or event that could cause serious injury.

“The definition of trauma should be expanded to include expectations of life,” said Bradow, who went through fertility treatments herself, and conducted the study as a doctoral student at Spalding University in Louisville. “Having children, expanding your family, carrying on your genetic code — that’s an instinctual drive that we have as human beings. And when that is being threatened, it’s not necessarily your life being threatened, but your expectation of what your life can be or should be like,” she said.

The finding also shows that a greater effort should be made to counsel those who go through fertility treatments, to help them cope with the emotional and psychological effects of the experience, Bradow said.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Couple’s struggle to have a child leads to surrogacy

brigitte

Dawn Kornstein felt the pain again.

The medication wasn’t working. There was nothing more the doctors could do. The contractions kept coming.

Dawn was 5½ months pregnant with twins, and the pain intensified with every breath. Her skin took on a gray pallor. The alarms hooked up to her monitors screamed every 15 minutes or so.

The doctor gave Dawn and her husband, Mike, the grim news: Baby Alex wasn’t going to make it. But if they delivered Alex and tied off the cord, maybe they could save Ben.

Maybe.

Dawn and Mike said goodbye to one son and willed the other to wait just a few more weeks before being born. Those weeks could make all the difference in whether he would live.

Ben died the day after his brother.

Devastated, the couple clung to this mantra: We can try again. We can have other children.

The dream is simple: To have a baby.

In generations past, couples faced with infertility had two choices: adopt a child or accept life without one.

Advances in medicine and science have provided more options: Fertility drugs. Artificial insemination. In vitro fertilization. Sperm donors. Egg donors. Surrogate mothers.

Approximately 2.7 million American couples put their faith in one or more of these options every year.

Still, not everyone who begins the quest ends with a baby. Only about 65% of women who seek fertility treatment ultimately give birth.

There are limits to what science can do, what government allows and what society supports.

Laws have not kept pace with medical innovations, leaving judges to make important decisions about the intersection of biology and parenthood with little or no guidance. What is rewarded as innovation in one state can be outlawed in another.

For some couples, the financial costs climb too high. For others, the personal costs become insurmountable.

This was the new world Dawn and Mike were entering. For them, the key to parenthood lay in Wisconsin – 1,000 miles from their Connecticut home.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

Emotional aid important when facing infertility

brigitte

Mara Kofoed was not always hopeful about having kids. When she first started trying for children in 2004, and learned that she had fertility issues, her life seemed full of fear and anxiety. She worried she’d never have children.

Kofoed is one of the 7.4 percent — 2.1 million — of married women aged 15-44 who are infertile, according to the Center for Disease Control. Infertility is defined as trying for pregnancy for 12 consecutive months without success. The study also shows 7.3 million women in this age bracket, or 11.8 percent, struggle with impaired fecundity, or the diminished ability to have children. While there are multiple medical options and remedies for women and men struggling with infertility, there is also a nationwide push toward often neglected emotional and spiritual treatments.

Become Informed

Effective treatments vary for intertility, said Corey Whelan, program director for The American Fertility Association. Because of this, she said, couples who have not been able to have children should become informed about their specific condition and find a specialist to meet their needs.

“It’s very, very important to tell yourself the truth and find out what works,” Whelan said. “Don’t sit in the anxiety for too long. The emotional toll for infertility is really extreme.”

Whelan has seen how lack of education and the perpetuation of inaccurate facts can close doors for women trying to have children. For instance, Whelan said she has known of many women who assume they can prolong their fertility with a healthy lifestyle. While the converse is true — obesity and unhealthy lifestyles will hurt someone’s chance for pregnancy ?— healthy habits will not lengthen the biological clock. Since 20 percent of women have their first child after the age of 35, according to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth, Whelen said it is important for them to realize their decreased chances of impregnation, even in spite of good health. Whelan also said women who are older than 35 should consult a specialist after six months of unsuccessfully trying for pregnancy.

Read full article.

Fertility Clock Headlines, Fertility Headlines

NICHD Issues Funding Opportunity Announcement for the Reproductive Medicine Network

ASRM News and Research

The NICHD invites applications from investigators willing to participate, with the assistance of the NICHD under cooperative agreements, in an ongoing multicenter cooperative program designed to conduct clinical studies to investigate problems in reproductive medicine including female and male infertility, gynecologic and male reproductive system diseases and disorders that impact fertility, problems in andrology and endocrinology affecting reproduction.