When Shelton and Brandi Koskie learned five years ago that they would need fertility treatments to have a baby, they were stunned. After all, the Koskies, who met while working at Old Navy in college, were in their early twenties, not typically an age when couples have to worry about the biological clock. Perhaps equally shocking was how much the procedures would cost: Some $20,000 out of pocket. Even though they were young professionals with good jobs, they had nowhere near that kind of cash lying around.

“There were a lot of nights that we would come home from work and sit quietly in the dark together and just cry,” says Brandi, now a 28-year-old senior editor at health and weight loss company DietsInReview.com. “That lasted a few days and then we said ‘That’s it, we’re done crying.’”

When the tears stopped, the brainstorming began. The Koskies were determined to find a way to raise the cash for the in-vitro fertilization they needed. In 2006, they launched BabyorBust.com, a blog where they began chronicling their struggle with infertility and asking for donations.

View the full article at Daily Finance

“Just relax and it’ll happen!”

“If it’s meant to be, you’ll have a baby.”

“I know someone who got pregnant while she was adopting a baby!”

If you’ve been struggling to have a baby, chances are you’ve heard remarks like these from well-meaning friends and family. Until now, you were able to turn to your partner for understanding and support when faced with these upsetting comments. Lately, though, he’s become sullen and withdrawn. You feel like you’re not communicating the way you used to.

A changing dynamic

Infertility can be a crisis for even the strongest relationship. Suddenly, the future that you expected and planned for is in question. Each partner might react differently to the news. Some may be open with friends and family about the emotional burden. They may seek out connections in support groups or online forums. Others may turn inward out of grief or shame and start to withdraw even from the people they are closest to.

View the full article at KIVI TV

Jay and Kelli Leiner were high school sweethearts, got married right after college and decided to start a family at age 26.

“I was one of those little girls who had a baby doll clutched in her hands from the beginning. I’ve always known that I wanted to be a mother,” Kelli Leiner said.

But both are now 31 and they’ve found the journey to parenthood to be long and painful.

“By the time we were 28 and we had no baby yet — we never got pregnant and the friends that we had were already onto their second child — we were wondering: What’s wrong with us?” Jay Leiner said.

What they discovered surprised them: She didn’t have a fertility problem. He did.

View the full article at ABC News

PARSIPPANY, N.J., March 8 /PRNewswire/ — The U.S. infertility specialty has empirically incorporated greater amounts of human menopausal gonadotropin (hMG) into stimulation protocols, according to a new review article, “Gonadotropins in the Treatment of Infertility” by George T. Koulianos, MD, published in a recent issue of US Obstetrics & Gynecology, supported by an educational grant from Ferring Pharmaceuticals.(1)  The article reviews the wealth of clinical evidence supporting this trend, and demonstrates how the use of gonadotropins in the treatment of infertility, especially in assisted reproductive technologies, has significantly improved outcomes.

View the full article at PR Newswire

We read often about allergies to milk, peanuts and shellfish, but for whatever reason, not so much about allergies to meat. A study just reported at a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, in New Orleans, suggests they may be more common than believed — maybe medium rare, the scientists appear to be suggesting.

Here’s a summary of the report, in a release from the academy. Conducted by researchers at the University of Virginia, the University of Tennessee and the John James Medical Center in Australia, it looked at 60 cases of recurring cases of unexplained anaphylaxis and found that 25 of those patients had IgE antibodies (the type of antibodies that are responsible for allergies) in their blood that reacted to alpha-gal (or alpha-galactose for long), a carbohydrate in meat.

View the full article at Loos Angeles Times