Go get some ice cream

Check out this research being published today...

Their study showed that if women ate two or more servings of low-fat dairy foods a day, they increased their risk of ovulation-related infertility by more than four fifths (85%) compared to women who ate less than one serving of low-fat dairy food a week. On the other hand, if women ate at least one serving of high-fat dairy food a day, they reduced their risk of anovulatory infertility by more than a quarter (27%) compared to women who consumed one or fewer high-fat dairy serving a week.

I wonder if they recommend a particular flavor...

Some really good news

Beth, after the most horrible pregnancy ever, welcomed her daughter on Thursday! Congratulations!!!

Amillia Taylor an IVF baby born at just 21 weeks and 6 days, was released from the hospital and her prognosis is good!

Faith's second beta looks good - this is her first IVF/ICSI cycle.

Other's I've missed?

Organizing your fertility

Da Capo Press was nice enough to send me an advance copy of Suzanne Schlosberg's new book – The Essential Fertility Log. It's spiral-bound and is a cross between a handbook and a journal – a handbook in terms of giving you accurate, relevant information and a journal in terms of encouraging you to keep track of what's important to you – cycle information, emotions, test results, personal fitness (exercise & relaxation), medications, etc. She's included bits of trivia to make page-turning interesting too.

My impression is that this organizer is good for both scatterbrains who can't remember things unless they write them down and for people who appreciate order. I spend hours answering trying-to-conceive questions, yet it continues to amaze me how much the basic information that appears in the book is unknown to women – regardless of whether the child they're trying to conceive is their first or not. Suzanne's organized it nicely and written it so it's simple to understand.

If you've come to this site, you're probably past the blissful first month or two when you think you automatically become pregnant the first time you try. For women who are well into ART (assisted reproductive technology), I don't think you'll come across new information, but you may enjoy the journal section. If you're trying to conceive without ART or are just beginning infertility treatments, I think you'll enjoy The Essential Fertility Log. It's a convenient way to keep tabs on everything that's going on in your TTC (trying to conceive) attempts and it's a breath of fresh air in the world of excess information.

A special congrats

To ElectricLady, who hung in there during many long months of bedrest and finally gave birth to her little Bat Girl!

Clowning around with IVF

My brother, Ben, who's taking a clown course (to become a clown therapist) sent me this article from Israel21c about the effects of being entertained by a clown following embryo transfer.

A team led by fertility expert Dr. Shevah Friedler at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center studied 186 women aged 25 to 40 over 10 months, all of whom were undergoing embryo transfer treatment. While half were simply given the treatment and nothing else, the other group was entertained by a clown for up to 15 minutes as they recuperated in bed after the treatment.

The results? 33 of the women who 'clowned' around became pregnant, compared to only 18 women in the control group. For the 60,000 American women who undergo IVF treatment annually, the message is: don't worry, be happy. "

Funny. My two successful embryo transfers (those that resulted in live births) involved the bed I was lying on crashing into the elevator door... I think I would have preferred the clown option.

PCOS - Clomid or Metformin?

Here's a quick summary of this article.

In an article coming out today in the New England Journal of Medicine (article abstract), researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health Reproductive Medicine research network report their findings from a study comparing the pregnancy and live birth rates in women with PCOS using clomiphene (clomid), metformin and a combination of both.

Christos Coutifaris, MD, PhD, Director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility and the principal investigator from Penn. is quoted as having said that he recommends and supports the use of clomiphene alone and not combined with Metformin as a first-line therapy for infertility in women with PCOS.

The study included 626 infertile women with PCOS who were divided into three groups. The first group received clomiphene and a placebo. The second received metformin and a placebo, and the third group received both metformin and clomiphene. The women took the medication for up to six months.

• In the metformin only group, 15 out of 208 women had given birth (7.2%).
• In the clomiphene only group, 47 out of 209 women had given birth (22.5%).
• In the combined clomiphene-metformin group, 56 out of 209 women had given birth (26.8%).

The difference in the number of births between the clomiphene only group and the combined clomiphene-metformin group was not statistically significant.

The researchers also found that, compared to the other women in the study, obese women were less likely to conceive during the course of the study and less likely to ovulate in response to metformin.

Male factor infertility

Here are some letters I got recently:

"We had been trying for a baby for a year and found out that my husband has azoospermia. Even ICSI and IVF cannot help us. Right now I am so angry and sad. And I am not sure who to be angry with. We have talked about donor insemination but my husband is not sure how he feels about this. I feel that there is so much more to being a parent than providing the genetic start-up. I know that if I donated eggs I would never feel that a resulting child was mine..."

"We have been trying to conceive a baby for a little over a year now and recently found out that my husband has a zero sperm count. We have tried numerous tests and very expensive options but nothing has worked... we are literally falling apart."

I wanted to take this opportunity to recommend some blogs dealing with male factor infertility:

Manana Banana - Amanda, who just gave birth to her son Adam
DI-Dad - Eric, who is raising his 2 children born by donor insemination
ProgJen - An orthodox Jewish woman dealing with male factor infertility

Got any blogs or books to recommend? Let me know!