Infertility, Does The Oserver Dicate The Outcome?

Here are some of the diagnosis I see in my patients' reproductive medical records:  "Clomid Failure," "High FSH," "Poor Responder," "IVF Failure," "Poor Egg Quality,"

"Advanced Maternal Age," and "Donor Egg Candidate." These are the most devastating reproductive diagnoses a woman can receive. Yet, most of my patients have high FSH, are over 35 years of age, and have been given upsetting opinions like "Your eggs are too old," and "You are a poor responder." And in most cases, they prove their doctors right. Yet, I'm beginning to see a change in this trend of the past. You see, nobody starts out with these diagnoses. Most women end up with these labels after years of failed reproductive treatments. According to quantum physics, the attitude of the scientist determines the outcome of the experiment.  In this context, your health care provider is the scientist, and you are the testing ground. And, let's face it: their attitudes affect your response.

 Laura had been given each of these diagnoses from her reproductive endocrinologist, and has just given birth to her son, whom she conceived naturally.

44 year old Kathleen was told she would never become a mother unless she used a younger woman's donated eggs. Her doctor was wrong. When her reproductive system was nurtured and cared for naturally, she conceived her healthy daughter on her own.

 Last week a reporter queried me on a quote a reproductive endocrinologist gave her: "2/3 of women over the age of 35 require medical intervention in order to conceive."

Not only are these attitudes injurious to your own reproductive capacity, I just don't believe them anymore. It's only when we buy this type of marketing that we end up proving their theories correct.

 Certainly, some women do require medical intervention. Yet, it should not be offered as a blanket solution to all infertility problems up front. It is accepted medical tradition that the simplest, least aggressive, and most cost effective treatments should always be exhausted first. Yet most women who ask their doctors "Is there anything I can do to improve my reproductive status?" are simply told "No, you are just too old."  Since we usually believe our doctors, we start to panic. This state of internal turmoil is an automatic fertility killer, more so than age. Yet it is precisely because of our terror that our reproductive specialists feel justified in starting out with an aggressive approach.

 Month after month, and year after year, I pick up the pieces of broken lives, broken promises, and broken dreams. And the stories rarely change. The histories begin with unexplained infertility after one year of unprotected intercourse, and end up with "IVF failure, recommend donor." Almost every time.  I don't wish to negate reproductive medical technology; I am pleased when it works. Yet because of the population of women I treat, I believe we need to place high tech intervention in its proper perspective. Instead of feeling the internal abasement of failing their procedures, perhaps their procedures have failed us in not allowing us our proper place of healing within it.

 There is another option that has been grossly overlooked in the relative recent history of reproductive medicine, and that is caring for our own reproductive wellbeing. When I was in medical school, we did not have any courses in reproductive health; we were trained only to treat disease. We learned to treat ever deteriorating systems which were failing us, just waiting for intervention. And I don't believe infertility is a disease. I view it as an epidemic of ignorance. We have not been taught how to care for our own reproductive systems.