fertility

How to Get Pregnant
Pregnancy

Trying to Get Pregnant? Test Your Fertility IQ

Every woman's experience with getting pregnant is different, and for some, the process can be both frustrating and challenging.
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Every woman's experience with getting pregnant is different, and for some, the process can be both frustrating and challenging. In celebration of its new Advanced Digital Ovulation Test, Clearblue recently hosted a fertility discussion with women's health expert Dr. Donnica Moore. While some of the conversation was a refresher in reproduction 101, Dr. Moore also brought up surprising facts and figures.

Many women are largely unaware of their own bodies' reproductive happenings, and may be struggling with conception because of a lack of understanding and not necessarily infertility issues. The benefit to using Clearblue's new product is that it identifies a woman's four best days to try to conceive during a cycle — twice as many as traditional ovulation tests can pinpoint. It's this knowledge of your own body's patterns that can ease the path to pregnancy.

We invite you to test your fertility IQ and see how your understanding of ovulation stacks up!

Source: Thinkstock
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Fertility Apps
fertility

Your High-Tech Pregnancy: 5 Apps to Help You Conceive

Ever feel like your life is ruled by your mobile phone?
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Ever feel like your life is ruled by your mobile phone? If you're trying to conceive, get ready to rely heavily on that multitasking device. Now more than ever, couples trying for a baby are moving their temperature charting and cervical mucus tracking off the notepad on the bedside table and onto their phones. With apps that can do everything from predicting your best day to conceive to telling you what foods can help prime your eggs for fertilization, there's certainly an app for everything! Check out five designed to help aid in getting you pregnant.

Fertility Friend Mobile (free) My Cycles (free) My Fertile Food ($2) Woman Calendar FemCal: Period and Ovulation Calendar ($4) iVitro ($6)
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Yoga For Fertility
fertility

The Best Yoga Poses For Improved Fertility

Whether you've tried it all and are at your wit's end or are just at the start of the your quest to become pregnant, restorative yoga can have tremendous benefits to improving your chances at conceiving.
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Whether you've tried it all and are at your wit's end or are just at the start of the your quest to become pregnant, restorative yoga can have tremendous benefits to improving your chances at conceiving. In addition to its physical benefits, practicing yoga relaxes the mind and spirit. Try out any or all of these five recommended poses for improving fertility from Yoga Journal. Whether the results are instantaneous or not, their benefits are well worth the time.

Source: FitSugar

Reclining Hero Pose Legs-Up-the-Wall Pose Butterfly Pose Supported Bridge (or Half Wheel) Pose Wide Angle Pose
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IVF Contest
Pregnancy

"Win a Baby" Contests: Ga Ga or Gag?

Step right up folks, and win a baby!
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Step right up folks, and win a baby! Well, not a baby exactly, but an increased chance at baby via free IVF treatments. Last month, a private Ottawa radio station ran a Win a Baby contest, offering $35,000 worth of IVF treatments to the couple that convinced both listeners and a panel of judges that they were the most worthy of the prize. For desperate would-be parents unable to afford the pricey treatments, not generally covered by insurance, the contest was no doubt one more chance at longed for pregnancy, but not surprisingly, the contest had its share of detractors. Beverly Hanck, executive director of the Infertility Awareness Association of Canada, dismissed the contest as tacky and distasteful, telling The Guardian:

The station is clearly capitalizing on vulnerable patients who are desperate to have a family. Has anyone stopped to think how the hundreds of patients who do not win are going to feel?

This isn't the first contest with IVF as prize: in July, UK fertility charity To Hatch launched a controversial monthly lottery in which prospective parents pay $32 a ticket for the chance to win $25,000 of personalized fertility treatments.



Photo courtesy of hot899.com

Fertility Ceremonies in Different Countries
fertility

Test Your Knowledge of Fertility Rites From Around the World

Fertility — or the lack thereof — has always been a major part of myth, legend, and ritual from around the world.
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Fertility — or the lack thereof — has always been a major part of myth, legend, and ritual from around the world. For as long as humans have been making babies, and trying to make babies, there have been methods and theories about the best way to improve fertility. Some communities depended solely on prayer; others put their faith in special herbs or sacrificial offerings.

Test your knowledge of some of the ways different cultures have beckoned fertility — past and present!

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Fertility Methods
Pregnancy

8 Fertility Methods For Aspiring Parents

"We're not barren, we're reproductively challenged!"
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Fertility Methods

"We're not barren, we're reproductively challenged!" snaps Charlotte York in Season 4 of Sex and the City, her response to future ex-husband Trey's insensitive comment about the couple's apparent inability to conceive. Like Charlotte and Trey, fertility is an issue for many prospective parents. Individual reasons for using Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) run the gamut from health conditions inhibiting conception to gay couples or single individuals seeking to reproduce biologically, but one thing's for sure: once someone has baby on the brain, there's almost no limit to what they'll do to achieve their goal. Keep reading for a list of fertility methods that will help individuals on their path to parenthood.

In Vitro Fertilization Donor Sperm Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection Fertility Drugs Artificial Insemination Surrogacy Surgery
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Sperm Donation and Potential Siblings
fertility

Super Sperm! One Man, 150 (Biological) Children

Not some tawdry tabloid story about rampant polygamy, the recent New York Times story, "One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring" tells the story of 20-year-old Ryan — born using donor sperm — and his 150 biological half-siblings.
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Not some tawdry tabloid story about rampant polygamy, the recent New York Times story, "One Sperm Donor, 150 Offspring" tells the story of 20-year-old Ryan — born using donor sperm — and his 150 biological half-siblings. It's no secret that donating sperm is — ahem — less complicated than harvesting a woman's egg, and with no definitive regulations in place to limit the number of offspring produced from one donor, the number of children conceived with sperm from one donor is essentially limitless.

Groups like the Donor Sibling Registry are exposing the truth about this traditionally secretive industry, and it's pretty scary. Fertility is clearly big business these days, but critics have raised concerns that if left unchecked . . . the record numbers of half siblings could potentially result in an increase of — yikes! — accidental incest.

If you used donor sperm, how much would you want to know — or share with your child — about his conception and biological siblings?

Causes of Male Infertility
fertility

Male Infertility Explained: Test Your Knowledge of the Causes

Wearing a cup while playing sports and avoiding hot baths before sex used to be the only advice men were given to prevent fertility issues.
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Wearing a cup while playing sports and avoiding hot baths before sex used to be the only advice men were given to prevent fertility issues. With one in six couples now having trouble conceiving after a year of trying, it's no wonder that younger men and women are seeking to prevent infertility even before they are ready to become parents. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal identified several surprising causes of male infertility. Take this quiz and see how much you know about issues affecting men's sperm.

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Kids With Cancer and Fertility
Health

Creating the Future: Should Doctors Be Concerned With Child's Fertility?

When a baby is born, parents dream of their tot's future.
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When a baby is born, parents dream of their tot's future. They envision the child talking, walking, graduating, getting married, and having offspring of their own. They assume their healthy kid will be able to reproduce, but that isn't the case for the mom and dad of a youngster fighting cancer. A recent report talked about the medical advancements that are being tested (and the lengths that doctors will go to) to preserve a prepubescent patient's fertility. It said:

With childhood cancer survival reaching 80 percent, there's a growing need to find ways to preserve these youngsters' fertility — and patients like Dylan are on the front edge of research that's banking testicular cells and ovarian tissue to try.

Callie Is Pregnant on Grey's Anatomy
parenting

Grey's Anatomy Pregnancy and Fertility Quiz!

Grey's Anatomy is getting to be all about the babies!
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Grey's Anatomy is getting to be all about the babies! As Callie's pregnancy becomes a main story line, lots of funny situations arise — especially since there are three parents-to-be chiming in with their opinions. And, Callie, Arizona, and Mark aren't the only ones making family plans. Derek and Meredith and Owen and Christina are also discussing the possibilities. Take this quiz and see how closely you watched last night's episode.

Photo copyright 2011, ABC, Inc.

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