Parenthood is the dream of almost all settled couples who are looking forward to start their families. It all starts with planning and proceeds to conception, pregnancy and childbirth followed by caring for the newborn. It’s a never ending journey that comes up with varied set of challenges at every stage. Despite that and apart from being physically, mentally and emotionally challenging, making and bringing up children is what makes life worthy and complete.
Unfortunately and although apparently easy for some, getting pregnant or giving birth to a healthy child becomes the most difficult task for a special few. Infertility is a serious problem affecting 11% and 9% of women and men respectively in the US. In the medical world, infertility is defined as inability to achieve pregnancy after a period of 1 year of unprotected intercourse.
Women and men in this day and age are fortunate enough to have access to advanced medical treatments that did not exist years ago. Numerous medical interventions have now made it possible for many infertile couples to achieve healthy, full term pregnancy. The treatments include simple medications as well as complex surgical and implantation procedures. Research study has shown that conventional medical therapy is helpful in treating infertility in 85% to 90% of cases. If, for any reason, the existing treatment options have failed in achieving pregnancy, assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are available. These are advanced and complex procedures performed by fertility specialists and include Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). In some cases, conventional ART are unsuccessful in achieving pregnancy and therefore, might require Third Party Assisted ART which involve sperm, egg or embryo donation and in certain cases when a woman is unable to conceive and carry a baby in her womb, a surrogate carrier mother is used to carry a fetus, the embryo of which usually originates from fusion of egg and sperm of the couple struggling infertility.
