In Vitro Fertility Goddess

Hi, I'm Jodi Panayotov, a self-professed "IVF Goddess" and "21st Century Woman" who's still struggling to make sense of everything from my husband's sock drawer to the invasion of Iraq by the ‘Coalition of the Willing', to why it was easier to meet a Beatle than conceive a child.

Amongst the myriad of things on this site, some light-hearted some serious, you'll find a Forum, up-to-the-minute News and Exclusive Articles on:

Latest News  

June 2008

NHS Denies IVF to Thousands of Infertile Couples

Smoking and IVF Don't Mix

Game Show Viewer Helps IVF Couple

IVF Right for Gay Couples in Ireland  

How To Protect Your Fertility

Fertility Package: ‘Procreation' is the New Craze

A World With No Children

Male Fertility Problems ‘inherited'

Wednesday 18 June, 2008

Source: American Journal of Epidemiology

Young men whose parents had fertility problems have been found to have poor sperm quality.

Researchers from the Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark looked at 311 men aged 18 to 21 and discovered that those who had the lowest sperm count and fewer normal-looking sperm were the children of parents who themselves took over a year to conceive.

They found that men with sub-fertile parents had a 22 % lower sperm count and a smaller percentage of structurally normal sperm than men born to fertile parents.

But the study was unable to establish whether the poorer sperm quality was related to inherited factors from the father, the mother or both.

The study confirms pervious studies which have found that fertility problems have at least some heritable causes.

If the findings of this study are confirmed and infertility is passed on from parents, it may lead to a significant rise in fertility problems as an increasing number of couple seek assisted reproduction treatment. Currently, almost 1 in 5 couples have difficulty conceiving in the western countries.

Lead researcher Dr Cecilia H. Ramlau-Hansen says that the "genes responsible for impaired sperm production would normally be eliminated by evolution but assisted reproduction technology interferes with this force of selection, and the long-term consequences are not known."

But she also acknowledges that her findings are based on a relatively small number of subjects and that further research would been needed to confirm the results.

IVF Parents ‘Right' to Choose Sex of Their Child

Male Sperm Collection Better Done at Home

Free Fertility Treatment for Texas Couple

A Successful Blastocyst Lies in its Genes

Egg Freezing Technique Just as ‘Safe' as IVF

IVF Babies and Genetic Problems

Pre-Implantation Genetic Screening or PSG Discouraged

When Life Without Children Is Not By Choice

Woman's Miscarriage After Her Arrest  

Feminism's Silence On Infertility

By Janet Albrechtsen

The Australian June 4, 2008

THE strategic silences of feminism are having profound effects on society. For all the brilliant choices ushered in for women - the freedom to forge ahead with careers, to stay single, if that was their wish, not to be tied down by family and babies, if that was their choice - feminism failed women by refusing to inform them that their new-found choices came at a price.

By failing to remind women about their biology and their declining fertility, feminism deliberately ignored the innate desire of most women to have a child. The silence continues. It is there in the classroom where, like previous generations of young girls, the present generation is still not taught that fertility cannot be taken for granted.

Fortunately, there are moves to fill in the silence about infertility. If it happens, it may allow young women to make more fully informed choices about work and babies, avoiding the sorrow that afflicted many of their childless forerunners.

Unlike women in the 1950s and '60s, the liberated generation of women that followed in the '70s and '80s had the world at their feet. Yet feminism's mantra of choice made little room for women who chose to eschew careers for babies.

If we are honest, feminism never had much time for babies. Having babies meant leaving the workplace, opting out of the career track, at least for a time. With its unwavering focus on encouraging women to make great strides in the professions, making their presence felt in the boardroom, the courtroom and parliament, the feminist movement deliberately ignored motherhood as a legitimate choice for women.

The cost of feminism's silence about fertility is etched in the faces of those women who pursued dazzling careers and carefree singledom but ended up childless such as ABC presenter Virginia Haussegger, who a few years ago openly wrote about the price she paid for listening to the feminist mothers, who encouraged us to reach for the sky but failed to tell us the truth about our biological clock. Said Haussegger: "Here we are, supposedly 'having it all' as we edge 40; excellent education; good qualifications, great jobs. It's a nice caffe-latte kind of life, really." But something was missing. "I am childless and I am angry. Angry that I was so foolish to take the word of my feminist mothers as gospel. Angry that I was daft enough to believe female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase."

The cost of feminism's silence about infertility is engraved in the experiences of those who, having delayed motherhood and unable to conceive, underwent in-vitro fertilisation at a great physical and emotional cost. Women such as Jodi Panayotov, who described how her mental anguish at not becoming pregnant had her rifling through her rubbish bin to check whether the second line on her discarded pregnancy test had appeared in the hour since she threw it there along with dozens of others. "If I thought IVF would be the answer to both my reproductive issues and my mental issues, I was mistaken. Yes, it produced a baby. But it took ages to recover from the emotional toll."

Infertility affects one in six Australian couples. While the causes are many, a woman's age is a critical factor. By age 26, a woman's rate of infertility doubles from one in 10 to one in five. By her mid-30s, a woman has a 15 per cent of becoming pregnant each month. By her early 40s, it falls to 5 per cent. Add in miscarriage rates of 25 per cent for women aged 35 to 39, and 50 per cent for women aged 40 to 44, and the rate of chromosomal abnormalities, which increases from a risk of one in 600 for a 20-year-old woman to one in 39 for a 42-year-old woman, and one realises that female fertility is not a given.

Of course, with male infertility accounting for 40 per cent of cases, there is a need for both sexes to understand fertility. Unfortunately, there is a profound gap between perception and reality. A study by the Fertility Society of Australia in 2006 found that 57 per cent of women in their 30s and 43 per cent of women in their 40s believed they would be able to conceive without any problems. The survey of 1200 women and 1200 men found that 40 per cent of childless men and women in their 30s were still saying they were not ready to have a child. While choosing to marry later and have babies even later may fit the career choices of young men and women, the report concluded that "a real tragedy could occur if these people reach their late 30s and decide they have changed their minds and do want children, only to find that it is biologically too late for them".

The FSA recommended an education program informing young people about their fertility. Last week, a similar plea was made in Britain by new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority head Lisa Jardine.

It is a message echoed by Candice Reed and Rebecca Featherstone, two young women who call themselves "IVF-lings". Reed, a journalist in New Zealand, was Australia's first IVF baby, born in 1980. Featherstone, a Sydney agent for media personalities, was conceived in Bourne Hall, Cambridge, where Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, was born. In the next few weeks, Reed and Featherstone will be sending letters to state education and health ministers across Australia asking that schoolchildren be taught about fertility and IVF.

Featherstone told The Australian students were not receiving enough information. "The only things I was taught at school were about sexual education, condoms and STDs, that sort of stuff. I never learned anything about infertility or how many people go through IVF. I was never taught how a woman's fertility decreases."

Ask a schoolteacher. Nothing has changed.

Featherstone says it's critical that young girls learn about their biology. "They may hold off having babies and do the career thing. And then they're like: 'Oh no, I'm 35 and I'll have to do IVF.' She says IVF shouldn't be treated lightly as a fallback position for the next generation of career women. "It's not something nice to go through."

With studies showing that mothers in their late 30s and 40s who have baby girls are perhaps compromising their daughters' ability to have children, the trickle-down consequences of infertility will be profound and many of them yet unknown. One thing is clear. For all of feminism's focus on women's choices, its failure to treat motherhood as a legitimate choice did women no favours.

IVF Success Rates ‘Too Low', Fertility Expert

Infertility in Canada: An Issue for the Young Too

Infertility: The Lessons That Come Too Late

The Pain of Miscarriage

When is it too Old to be a Mother?

New Pill to Boost Male Fertility

IVF Used as Fertility Safety Net

Infertility Education Call for Young Children

Monday 2 June, 2008 

Children should be taught in school about infertility as well as about avoiding pregnancy, according to the new head of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in Britain.

Lisa Jardine believes too few young people realize the difficulties they could face in trying for a family later in life. She also wants to youngsters to understand how obesity can impact on their future fertility.

"You've got to start it at school. If one in seven of us in the modern world is going to have problems with infertility then instead of all the teaching at school being about how to stop getting pregnant someone had better start teaching about how you do get pregnant, because there are going to be a lot of extremely disappointed people out there."

She adds: "I think male fertility is way down. There are probably all sorts of ecological and environmental reasons why we are less fertile. I think we could take that opportunity to talk about what happens if it isn't easy. In other words, it would make it less of a dreadful threat if you did not get pregnant."

Recent figures from the HFEA show that more than 32,000 women a year get fertility treatment, leading to more than 11,000 births. Studies have shown that female obesity dramatically lowers the chance of conceiving and raises the risk of serious complications during pregnancy.

The British Fertility Society issued guidelines to IVF clinics last year advising starting treatment on severely overweight women only once those women had cut their body mass index to below 35. Women under 37 years should cut their weight further, to a BMI of less than 30, the guidelines stated. A woman with a BMI above 35 was half as likely to get pregnant as a woman whose BMI was less than 30.

Some experts believe obesity could be a factor that will drive one in five couples to seek fertility treatment within a decade.

Jardine wants more widespread knowledge about fertility treatment. She said clinicians can be surprised to find women are unaware of what IVF entails. Yet treated women will probably not be able to work and need daily injections. "They will be given chemicals that disturb their hormonal balance, possibly permanently … they have scans that are intrusive and surgical procedures that are thoroughly invasive, and, at the end, if lucky, get a baby."

Jardine believes there should be more open discussion also on scientific research involving embryos.

…

May 2008 

Doctors Refuse Fertility Treatment to Same-Sex Couple 

Wednesday 28 May, 2008

Can fertility doctors deny IVF to lesbian couples based on their religious beliefs opposed gay relationships?

That's the question the California Supreme Court is having to grapple with after a same-sex couple sued two doctors who refused to provide them with infertility treatment in 1999. The fertility doctors argue they have the constitutional right to refuse treatment because of their religious beliefs. Their legal argument pits religious freedom against state and federal constitutional laws banning discrimination.

The case comes only two weeks after the state ruled the ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional. And with the Supreme Court being mostly reluctant to hand down rulings which go against the tough civil rights laws for physicians who selectively deny treatment based on sexual orientation, there's a strong chance it will rule in favour of the plaintiff, Guadalupe Benitez. She was denied artificial insemination at the only clinic in her hometown of Oceanside that provided fertility treatment under her insurance plan. At the time, the doctors objected to providing the treatment because of her relationship with her same-sex domestic partner, but did refer her to practitioners at another clinic.

Lawyers for the doctors, along with conservative groups, argue that the Court would set a bad precedent for the medical profession if doctors are forced to provide treatment despite moral and religious objections. They argue that it would trample on religious freedom.

After the hearing Ms Benitez, who has since had twin daughters and a son through IVF told reporters she is pressing the case to prevent others from being humiliated if they end up in a similar position.

The California Medical Association has not taken a position in the Supreme Court.

The court has 90 days to rule.

Jodi Panayotov

… 

Men's Fertility Counts Too!

Tuesday 27 May, 2008

When women prepare themselves to have children, they often start taking prenatal vitamins in order to boost levels of must needed calcium and iron which are essential to a healthy pregnancy.

As for men, it's a different story altogether. The vast majority simply don't follow any pre-conception diet. Not that it's there fault. The fact is that the medical establishment focuses almost solely on women with no emphasis whatsoever on helping prospective fathers have healthy children. And given that men make up half of the child's genes and their sperm is particularly vulnerable to toxins (see latest news item ‘Painters at Risk of Fertility Problems'), this oversight is truly astonishing!

And it's not like the issue is never talked about: the American Association for the Advancement of Science dedicated an entire symposium to the topic earlier this year, with numerous studies coming out since linking men's diets to sperm defects.

But for some reason this information isn't getting through. Some will argue that it's the result of men's cultural reluctance to talk about their sperm because it goes to the core of male virility.

Well if that's the case, it might be time for men to consider changing their mindset. Sperm develop over 10 week period during which men can enhance or at least protect the health of their sperm before they conceive. But the very nature of how sperm is produced means that men should prepare themselves well before that. Indeed, by opposition to women, who are born with a finite number of eggs, men's genes are constantly dividing into new sperm making them particularly vulnerable to DNA flaws.

So for those men willing to listen to pre-conception advice, doctors would tell them to avoid heavy alcohol consumption, illicit drugs, give up cigarettes and start taking vitamins.

This also means that if couples are having trouble conceiving, they should both get thoroughly checked by a qualified medical practitioner.

Jodi Panayotov

…

Painters at Risk of Fertility Problems

Saturday 25 May, 2008

Source: Journal Occupational Environmental Medicine.