By Eve Feinberg, M.D.<\/p>\n
Fertility Myths<\/i><\/p>\n
Myth #1: Missionary position is best.<\/p>\n
As long as intercourse is vaginal (and yes, strangely, I have had a few couples who had not grasped this detail prior to their first consultation), position does not matter.\u00a0 Sperm are incredible swimmers and studies have shown that within minutes of intercourse the sperm can be found within the fallopian tubes and will get to where they need to be expeditiously.<\/p>\n
Myth #2: You should lie still for 30 minutes after intercourse with your legs in the air.<\/p>\n
Sperm are incredible swimmers (see #1).\u00a0 It will not decrease your likelihood of conceiving if you use the bathroom or walk around within minutes of intercourse.<\/p>\n
Myth # 3: I got pregnant and had an abortion in high school, so I am highly fertile.<\/p>\n
Most high school students are highly fertile, but fertility declines with advancing age.\u00a0 Girls are born with a set number of eggs and over the course of a woman’s reproductive life, the number of eggs declines dramatically.\u00a0 There are several critical periods where the decline is more steep and after the age of 45, there is such little benefit to IVF\u00a0using your own eggs, that most\u00a0clinics\u00a0will not perform IVF on a 45 year old woman attempting conception with her own eggs.\u00a0 On a good note, having had an abortion does not make you infertile.<\/p>\n
Myth #4: \u00a0I am a “young” 40.<\/p>\n
Aging occurs at a variable rate when it comes to gray hair and wrinkles.\u00a0 Ovarian aging, unfortunately, is quite predictable.\u00a0 Your ovaries will never act younger than your chronological age.\u00a0 They may respond more robustly than expected and may give you a higher yield of eggs, but the quality of those eggs is linked to a woman’s age.\u00a0 And sadly, egg quality and quantity decrease markedly with advancing age.<\/p>\n
Myth #5: If you relax, you will get pregnant.<\/p>\n
There are very few cases where the sole cause of infertility or IVF success is stress.\u00a0 This is a common perception and often a hurtful thing to say to an infertile couple.\u00a0 Infertility is a medical condition with identifiable, organic causes in the majority of cases.\u00a0 There has not yet been a well designed study that shows the positive impact of stress reduction on conception success.<\/p>\n
I hope you’ve enjoyed Fertility Myths (and my VERY FIRST) blog entry ever.\u00a0 I am excited to be on the blogosphere and welcome your comments or suggestions for new topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Eve Feinberg, M.D. Fertility Myths Myth #1: Missionary position is best. As long as intercourse is vaginal (and yes, strangely, I have had a few couples who had not grasped this detail prior to their first consultation), position does not matter.\u00a0 Sperm are incredible swimmers and studies have shown that within minutes of intercourse […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,108],"tags":[49,141],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fertility","category-sperm-2","tag-infertility","tag-myths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maledoc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}