It’s Not Over Til It’s Over: Fertility Revisited

By Yemi Adesanya-Famuyiwa, MD

Montgomery Fertility Center

. http://montgomeryfertilitycenter.com/

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It’s Not Over Til It’s Over: Fertility Revisited

It is a well established fact that fertility is intimately related to the age of a woman. After the age of 35, fertility starts to drop off significantly. In the absence of a specific diagnosis, patients trying to conceive at that age for more than six months of duration are said to have unexplained infertility.

What is little known is that in the absence of any treatment, and while waiting to establish treatment, the natural rate of conception leading to ongoing pregnancy or life birth is approximately 15% at six months for a 35-year-old woman with two years of prior unexplained infertility. This rate is 24% after 12 months. For 42-year-old women this rate decreases to 8% after six months and 13% after 12 months.

Once a cause of fertility has been established however, this rate can be expected to be much lower. Therefore, women waiting to start their fertility treatment, or between treatment cycles and with a diagnosis of unexplained infertility, may still attempt natural conception. For patients who are older who have a much diminished ovarian reserve, they may choose to explore options such as egg donation, abdoption, or child-free living.

Why Try Alone?

Furthermore, an online study involving over 8,000 women found that the use of a menstrual cycle monitoring app in combination with fertility indicators can improve the chances of pregnancy.

Not all apps are created equal. Five apps are noted to have higher rates of success than others. These include Clue, Fertility Friend, Glow, Kindara, and Ovia.

The probability of pregnancy was increased by us much as 20% in women who were using monitoring apps,

The chances of a successful outcome was further increased when use of the apps were combined with the application of fertility indicators.

What are fertility indicators? Fertility indicators include basal body temperature, cervical fluid, cervix position and/or urine LH.

When a cycle monitoring app was combined with one or more fertility indicators, there was an increase in per-cycle probability of pregnancy – in other words your chances of getting pregnant in each cycle that you attempt to do so increases.

Previously published on medium.com