Conception

The Chinese table or Chinese calendar is one of the best known systems for predicting the sex of the baby. I am sure that there are even couples who entrust themselves to the calendar to try to ensure that the conception occurs at the right time for the baby to be a boy or a girl. Recall that the Chinese table is based on the age of the woman at the time of becoming pregnant and in the month in which the baby is conceived.

Yoga is a very beneficial millenary practice to bring body and mind into harmony. In the search for a baby, both should be in accordance for the conception to occur, however sometimes the frantic pace of everyday life causes us to lose that ideal balance. In those cases, it is recommended to practice yoga to increase fertility, both in men and women.

I have filled out this baseline temperature chart as an example to read your results. When, over several months, we observe that the data in our tables are repeated regularly, it is when you can "predict" more or less reliably the moment of the next ovulation and have these tables served to try to get pregnant.

A recent study has emerged that questions the safety of this assisted reproduction technique, ensuring that pregnancies achieved by in vitro fertilization (IVF) have four times the risk of fetal death. Of course, this conclusion has put the hair on end to many experts who defend the reliability of IVF.

When we want to get pregnant, one of the questions we usually ask ourselves is what are my fertile days, so that conception occurs when we have sex. While it is not good to become obsessed with the fertility calendar, and it is also not guaranteed that on our fertile days we will become pregnant, we can find out which are the most appropriate days to try.

The average age of mothers has increased in recent times leaving behind the twenty of our mothers to give way to the thirty years now (well, 30.83 years on average in 2007 to be exact). The reasons are diverse: labor and economic instability, the abusive price of homes to date, the general stress of the population, the decrease in sperm quality, the need to "burn cartridges" before having children (travel, live as a couple, ...), the emotional stability of the couple and many others that I leave in the inkwell.

Folic acid is a vitamin B complex essential to prevent malformations in the baby such as spina bifida and other congenital diseases. Therefore, women who wish to have a baby are recommended to take a folic acid supplement at least one month before becoming pregnant. But the baby is the fruit of the union of the female and male gamete, so it is logical that men also take folic acid before conception to avoid defects in the fetus.

A few days ago we talked about the most frequent questions that arise when a couple decides to look for a pregnancy. There are so many questions that we continue today with a few more. How likely are I to get pregnant every time we make love? As we said in the previous post, if sex is practiced at the time of ovulation and if neither the man nor the woman have fertility problems, the chances of becoming pregnant are 25%.

If a few days ago we discussed some things that should be taken into account before becoming pregnant today we will talk about the most frequent questions or concerns about the conception and fertility that couples who have decided to have children usually have. It is normal to arrive at that moment with a thousand unknowns because when it is decided to look for the first child it is being done for the first time in life and of course, there is no prior learning about this.

American law allows you to choose the sex of the baby, something that has led many Spanish couples and other nationalities to travel to the United States to choose to have a child. These couples undergo preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique used to rule out inherited diseases, but that also reveals the sex of the embryo.

The couple's fertility is influenced by a lot of factors. Among them we can mention, stress, lifestyle and of course, food. Just as women should start caring for their diet in the search for a pregnancy, men would also have to start paying attention to their diet to improve the quality of their sperm.

Greek mythology related cases like this to us. Heracles and his brother Ificles were born as twins, but the first was the son of Zeus and the second of the mortal Host. Their mother, Alcmena, conceived them on the same long night and grew up sharing the uterus. However, in everyday reality we had not heard that this could occur in a confirmable way, even if it was possible.

Women who have undergone aggressive chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments to cure a cancer have reduced their chances of becoming mothers, but new techniques have emerged that allow them to protect their fertility. Months ago, Eva told us about a pilot test, a new ovarian stimulation technique that was being carried out and meant new hopes to conceive after cancer.

Sometimes science and technology surprise us with samples of their potential. In this case they join forces to show us images as impressive as these that I bring you today. These are images of different moments of fertilization, made with a scanning electron microscope that manages to increase reality by up to 250.

It is claimed that there are already clones of humans. A few days ago, in the Italian magazine Oggi, an interview with the gynecologist Severino Antinori was published in which he claimed that he had successfully carried out the cloning of human beings. It would be three babies born nine years ago and residing in some country in Eastern Europe, although he has refused to give personal references of families in order to preserve their privacy.

Today I want to give a twist (I do not say if tightening or loosening) to the issue of conception and reproduction with another factor that generates social debate, what is the best age to have children. The average age of maternity in Spain is 29'3 years, a figure that places us in the antepenultimate position of Europe, and 30% of women have their first child with more than 35 years.

On some occasion we have talked about how obesity makes conception difficult, both in assisted reproduction processes and in natural ones. A new study confirms that obesity hinders the reproductive process. Even if the obese woman who wants to get pregnant is young and has a regular menstrual cycle, the difficulties in achieving pregnancy are greater than in the case of a woman with adequate body mass.

We know that cancer is a disease that can lead to difficulties in getting a pregnancy, and a hard blow for parents who want to have a child. But it is also true that the doors are not closed and today there are medical means and advances that make "the miracle" possible. From the web of the Valencian Institute of Infertility (IVI) we can consult some informative leaflets about the possibility of being a mother or father after cancer, information that has the backing of the Spanish Association against cancer (AECC).

There are several studies that state that conceiving children through assisted reproduction carries a greater risk of complications of various types, such as prematurity, low weight or different congenital malformations in the baby. At the moment the probability of suffering these risks is not so important as not to continue using this method.

We know that in many occasions the possibility of having a child after undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy are reduced, and even disappear, due to the aggressiveness of the treatment. These therapies can damage a woman's ovaries, even irreversibly. According to conventional protocols, ovarian stimulation only begins at the beginning of the woman's menstrual cycle, so that a patient diagnosed with cancer who should start her treatment immediately may not be in that situation and not be able to produce eggs that would be saved for A future conception.