Infertility - Introduction

Pre-pregnancy advice 

Normal Conception

Infertility Investigations

Causes And Management Of Infertility

About 1 in 6 of all couples seek specialist help because of difficulty in conceiving, though that includes some trying for a second pregnancy. That remarkable statistic should not be surprising if we appreciate that human fertility is relatively inefficient. The over-population of our world with people is because we have learned to be efficient survivors; we are relatively poor reproducers!

Amongst couples of proven normal fertility the highest conception rate per monthly cycle is 33% (1 in 3), occurring in the first month. The monthly rate then falls quickly over 6 months, to about 5% (1 in 20) by which time about half of couples have achieved a pregnancy. One in 10 fertile couples (10%) take more than one year to conceive, and 1 in 20 (5%) take more than 2 years, just by chance.

Fertility is a matter of chance. Like trying to throw a "6" with dice, you may be lucky first time, but there is no guarantee you will succeed even after lots of attempts. As with normal fertility, so it is with infertility treatments. Any treatment that offers as much as 25% chance of conception each cycle is as good as can be expected by reference to normal fertility statistics.

Therefore many couples who have been trying to conceive for only a year or two are normal, and will conceive without help. But of course some will have a real cause therefore all deserve to be investigated. The basic screening tests can be done by your GP. If they give no pointers to a specific cause it would be better not to proceed too quickly to specialist tests/investigations (which are described below) until after 1-2 years. Women over 35 years old, however, have no time to lose and would have a strong case to proceed quickly, after one year at most.

See also:

• Pre-pregnancy advice
• Normal Conception
• Fertility Investigations
• Causes And Management Of Infertility

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