This friendly guide combines professional and personal advice on every aspect of fertility and infertility. From deciding when to seek help and what help to seek, to the emotional, fi nancial, and medical considerations of fertility treatments, you’ll be reassured every step of the way with all the support and specialist advice you need to increase your chances of a healthy and happy pregnancy.
Table of Content
Introduction 1
Part I: Making Babies as Nature Intended 5
Chapter 1: In the Beginning 7
Chapter 2: Taking Baby Steps 21
Part II: Planning a Pregnancy 43
Chapter 3: We’re Trying! We’re Trying! (to Get Pregnant) 45
Chapter 4: You, Your Fertility, and Your GP 71
Chapter 5: Great Expectations But: Early Pregnancy Loss 81
Part III: Tests and Investigations 95
Chapter 6: Moving on Up: Seeing a Specialist 97
Chapter 7: Finding the Female Problem: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3 .107
Chapter 8: It’s a Man Thing: When Tests Reveal Sperm Problems 133
Part IV: Eureka! Possible Solutions 145
Chapter 9: Doing Your Homework: Researching Fertility Clinics and Funding Treatment 147
Chapter 10: All The ‘I’s: Introducing IUI, IVF, and ICSI 165
Chapter 11: Giving Mother Nature a Helping Hand: Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) 177
Chapter 12: Making Test-Tube Babies: IVF 189
Chapter 13: ICSI: It Only Takes One Good Sperm! 207
Chapter 14: ‘Babies on Ice’: Egg Freezing and Fertility Treatment 211
Chapter 15: Giving, Receiving, and Sharing: Egg Donor Treatments 219
Chapter 16: Creating an Embryo: Amazing Teamwork in the Lab 227
Part V: Post-First Cycle: How You May Feel and What You Can Do 241
Chapter 17: Waiting and Hoping: Surviving the Two-Week Wait after Embryo Transfer 243
Chapter 18: What’s in Your Freezer? Frozen Embryo Transfers 261
Chapter 19: If at First You Don’t Succeed: Trying IVF More than Once 269
Part VI: Different Strokes for Different Folks: Options for Non-Traditional Families 281
Chapter 20: Third-Party Reproduction: You and You and Me and Baby Make Four! 283
Chapter 21: Safe Options for Same-Sex Couples and Single Mums 295
Chapter 22: Ready-Made Families and Other Choices 305
Chapter 23: New Advances and Ethical Dilemmas 317
Part VII: The Part of Tens 333
Chapter 24: Ten Tips to Get You Through Treatment (and Keep You Sane!) 335
Chapter 25: Ten (Okay, Seven) Groups of Fertility Medications and Where to Find Them 339
Index 345
About the author
Dr Gillian M. Lockwood BM BCh MA (Oxon) DPhil MRCOG is the Medical Director of Midland Fertility Services(www.midlandfertility.com). Gill was a late recruit to medicine.She read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford Universityand then worked as a Government Statistician. A televisiondocumentary encouraged her to change careers to Medicine and shequalified in 1986. A chance meeting with Professor Robert Edwards(the ‘testtube’ baby pioneer) introduced her to thescience of IVF and since 1990 she has specialised in Reproductive Medicine.
For 10 years Gill was Senior Clinical Research Fellow and Lead Clinician at the Oxford Fertility Unit, where her researchinterests included polycystic ovary syndrome, premature ovarianfailure, and recurrent miscarriage. She lectures and broadcasts onethical and social issues in reproductive medicine, has chaired the British Fertility Society Ethics Sub-Committee, and is a member ofthe RCOG Ethics Committee. She is an Associate Editor of Human Reproduction and a member of the Editorial Board of Human Fertility. She has published over 30 ‘first author’articles in international journals and has contributed to many textbooks and review publications.
Since 2000 Gill has been the Medical Director of Midland Fertility Services (MFS), in the West Midlands. MFS is a ‘nurseled’ fertility unit at which the nursing staff perform allprocedures required for IVF including surgical sperm retrieval(TESA), egg retrieval, and embryo transfer. MFS recently announcedthe successful delivery of the UK’s first ‘frozenegg’ babies; a development that has given new hope ofbecoming ‘genetic mothers’ to the thousands of youngwomen who each year have to undergo sterilising chemotherapy orradiotherapy.
Jill Anthony-Ackery BA (Hons) is the Communications Manager at Midland Fertility Services. Jill is a relatively recententrant to the world of fertility treatment, with responsibilityfor the communications and marketing of MFS since 2003, initiallyas a consultant public relations director and then as a member ofthe clinic staff since 2004. Her qualifications for such a role? Adegree in art and film history (!) and 18 years’ experiencemanaging the reputations of client companies from a small UK tradeassociation to international cosmetics, steel, and photographicequipment manufacturers. Oh! and also two years of ICSI treatmentat MFS, during which she and her husband Gwyn conceived twins, suffered a miscarriage at around 12 weeks, then had an unsuccessfulfrozen embryo transfer, followed by a second full cycle, resultingin the birth of their daughter Connie in 2002.
When she returned to work in 2003, she combined her almostevangelical zeal about those miracle workers at MFS with herprofessional experience and patient perspective – and gotpaid for doing so! It’s a dream job where she continues to beinspired daily by the team and patients.
Jill has written countless articles in a range of newspapers, consumer magazines, and trade publications from many industrysectors. She was also the original editor and a contributor to Beyond the Lens, the business bible for professionalphotographers. In 2006, her work at MFS won a gold award from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and she works closely withnational and regional press, television, and radio to satisfy theunquenchable media interest in assisted conception.
Jackie Meyers-Thompson is managing partner of Coppock-Meyers Public Relations/For Your Information Communications, and a ‘professional’ fertilitypatient.
Sharon Perkins is the nurse coordinator for the Cooper Center for In Vitro Fertilization in Marlton, New Jersey, one ofthe largest infertility centres in the United States. Shepreviously worked in labour and delivery and neonatal intensivecare.
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