With all the awareness about infertility it’s understandable women are concerned that they may be that 1 in 6. So I thought I would address a question I get asked all the time… “how can I check my fertility?”
As we know fertility is complex and multifactorial so unfortunately there is no one test that can check if you are “fertile”. So for women with a regular cycle and no medical conditions known to affect fertility, the only way to know if you can fall pregnant is to give it a go!
So while there’s no real way of “checking fertility” instead I get my patients to change their focus to “optimising fertility”
How?
- Optimise all Modifiable Fertility Factors
- Aim for a healthy weight range
- Stop smoking and any other drug use
- Limit alcohol intake
- Ensure healthy diet and regular exercise
- Stop hormonal contraception and allow a window for your natural cycle to regulate
- Take care of your mental wellbeing
- Educate yourself
- Get to know your menstrual cycle and whether it is normal
- Understand your own fertile window and “how to fall pregnant”.
- Know how long it should take you to fall pregnant naturally and where and when to seek help
- Discuss more complex personal fertility factors with your GP early
- Age – discuss fertility plans and preservation options.
- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), Endometriosis, Type 1 diabetes, Thyroid dysfunction, Known or suspected reproductive anatomy problems.
- Known or suspected genetic conditions
You may notice I haven’t mentioned AMH testing (well until now!) I will do a post on this soon, but in short, AMH testing has no reliable role in “checking fertility”. However, it can be a useful infertility investigation and is very important in IVF planning.
Over the next while I will pop up some posts going into each of these fertility factors in an effort to help you all understand and optimise your own fertility, and most importantly know when and where to seek help if you have worries or are experiencing infertility.
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