What if we could talk about it? In an ideal world, men and women could openly discuss their trouble building a family. Changing the way we speak to one another is the first step.

When you’re the friend…

People often advise loved ones to “stop thinking about it” or say, “You could always adopt.” Although you may think you are comforting someone by telling her about your pal who got pregnant after three miscarriages, hold back. “Don’t try to solve the problem, because you can’t,” cautions SELF contributing editor Catherine Birndorf, M.D.

Instead, simply say, “I love you and want to support you in any way that I can.” Then make a serious and specific gesture; infertility patients suggest offering a hand to hold at a doctor’s appointment or buying a mutual friend’s baby gift to spare your pal the pain of doing it herself.

View the full article at Self

Rep erred in saying IVF treatment is covered — and so it is

Dear Fixer: In my Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois PPO plan, I have coverage for infertility, but the wording was unclear to me.

My policy basically read that I have a $20,000 lifetime maximum for infertility and coverage of four in vitro fertilization treatments. It also includes that to qualify for IVF I had to prove I needed it. I tried four different infertility treatments before IVF and was approved for IVF by the doctor.

The part that was unclear was whether the four IVF treatments were included in the $20,000 lifetime maximum. Logically, I was thinking that maybe it was not included in the lifetime max since one IVF cycle can cost up to $16,000 or so, so mathematically speaking, it didn’t add up. Four IVF treatments would cost about $60,000.

Also, to prove I was a valid candidate for IVF, I had to go through many other infertility treatments that cost a lot of money. So to ensure I’d even be approved, I would have to use a big chunk, if not all, of the lifetime maximum.

View the full article at Chicago Sun Times

Men and yeast have something in common: they use the same molecular process to ensure the integrity of their gene pool during reproduction. This is a recent finding by researchers from CNRS, Inserm and the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble. The scientists are studying yeast in order to shed light on the numerous cases of male infertility related to the malfunction of this process during spermatogenesis.

View the full article at Science Daily

Women with mental stress may have more trouble conceiving than their unstressed peers, a new study shows. Among 274 English women, all trying to get pregnant, those with the highest levels of alpha-amylase — a salivary biomarker for stress — had an estimated 12% reduction in their chance of getting pregnant each menstrual cycle, compared to women with the lowest levels.

These new results come from researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Oxford. Although the precise mechanisms by which stress hormones interfere with reproductive-system hormones are not entirely known, there is evidence that, in extreme cases, mental stress can even lead to lack of menstruation — missed periods. At least in this current study, however, there was no correlation between women’s levels of cortisol, another more commonly measured stress hormone, and their chance of conception.

Read the full article at Time

But activists say common health issue needs to emerge from shadows

Lisa scans the room for an empty seat. Save for the disembodied voices of unseen nurses summoning patients into exam rooms, the place is excruciatingly quiet. The clouds outside the floor-to-ceiling windows cast a pallor onto the walls, the furniture and the faces of some 40 women waiting at the Perelman Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. Everyone is here for the same reason: She can’t get pregnant without a doctor’s help. Yet with so much in common, no one speaks or even acknowledges one another. The women sit at least one empty chair apart, reading the newspaper, tapping on their BlackBerries, staring at their shoes. The few who are accompanied by husbands — they don’t talk, either.

“You can cut the tension with a knife,” says Lisa, a 33-year-old health-policy analyst who is here for her fourth cycle of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Lisa finds a love seat with room for her and her oversize red leather purse and plops down into it. It’s 8 a.m., but already she’s exhausted. And she’s scared, hoping for joy but preparing for heartbreak. It’s a feeling she’s grown accustomed to in more than two years of trying to have a baby with her husband, Jack. Her big brown eyes are on the verge of tears. “I never imagined it would come to this,” she says.

View the full article on MSNBC