In Vitro Fertility Goddess

Forget the Fertility Kit, Buy Wine Instead

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Monday 14 April, 2008  

It's a booming industry worth billion of dollars a year and growing as the global fertility crisis grows. Yes, I'm talking about those fertility kits which measure the follicle stimulating hormone and cost bewtween 2 and $300.

But while these kits do tell you how many eggs you have left, they fail miserably when it comes to determining their quality. And according to one of Britain's leading fertility experts, that makes them nothing more than a waste of time and money.

Dr Simon Fishel, head of CARE Fertility in Nottingham, says that the "kits can make couples unnecessarily worried or misguided into believing that everything is OK by giving a one-dimensional result but that needs to be put in the context of a woman's medical history by an expert."

His advice? Spend the money on a health professional, failing which you should take your partner out for a romantic dinner with a good bottle of wine.

And as far as Professor David Baird of Edinburgh University is concerned, a woman's age was a much better predictor of fertility. He believes that "the main factor when you are trying to have a baby is the quality of the egg. You can have lots of eggs left in the ovaries but they are still no good if they are of poor quality. As you get older the quality of your eggs deteriorate. If you leave it too long you will be infertile".

"Most people know their birth date and that doesn't cost anything" he concluded while speaking at a fertility conference in London last week.

Jodi Panayotov