Tips to Prepare for Fertility Treatment

Most Important Tips to Prepare for Fertility Treatment

Over 80% of the time, fertility drugs can stimulate ovulation—fertility treatments are being done now more than ever. Current technology offers fertility treatments to make pregnancy a reality for many couples who would otherwise struggle. Fertility treatments are a highly involved process and can be both emotionally and physically taxing. However, certain things can help you prepare for fertility treatments to alleviate stress and increase the likelihood of a healthy pregnancy.

7 Tips to prepare for fertility treatments

• Quit unhealthy habits - When starting fertility treatments, quit smoking, drinking, and staying up late to help prepare your body for a pregnancy while increasing the chances of getting pregnant.
• Maintain a healthy weight - Being overweight can affect pregnancy. Excess weight increases the risk of a miscarriage and can affect outcome with in vitro fertilization procedure (IVF). A high BMI also affects the safety of undergoing anesthesia or sedation, which is necessary with IVF.
• Eat a balanced diet - Eating a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats can help you maintain a good weight while building up nutrition for better overall health.
• Get quality sleep - Sleep is crucial for cellular repair, maintaining stress levels, and essential for fertility. Set a goal of getting between 7/ 9 hours of quality sleep each night.
• Maintain stress levels- Stress can hurt the chances of successful fertility. Seek ways to maintain stress during this process. Try things like acupuncture, walking, journaling, and meditating to decrease anxiety.
• Change workout routines - Exercise is great for increasing fertility. Replacing running and extreme exercising like bodybuilding to a gentler routine. Yoga, walking, swimming, hiking, and biking are wonderful ways to get gentle exercise during fertility treatments and pregnancy.
• Begin taking a prenatal vitamin - It is recommended to increase nutrients during fertility treatments. Prenatal vitamins are an excellent choice to ensure the body has enough folic acid, which aids in developing the brain and spinal cord during pregnancy. Please discuss with your doctor what prenatal vitamins they recommend.

Prepare for Fertility Treatment

How to Increase Chances of IVF Success

If you are looking to increase your chances of conceiving during IVF, here are 8 tips from 5 different fertility doctors.

 

1. Maintain a healthy weight.
"Maintaining a healthy weight is extremely important in fertility and IVF," says Linnea Goodman, MD, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UNC School of Medicine. "We know that being obese (BMI >35) and underweight (BMI <19) increases time of conception by 2 and 4 times respectively, and negatively effects IVF success rates. Being overweight also makes monitoring the ovaries during IVF more difficult and increases the chance of complications during egg retrievals."

This is best implemented with changes in diet and activity with professional help.

"Working with dietitian, and in some programs enrolling in a cardio metabolic weight loss program can help achieve these goals," says Zaraq Khan, MD, reproductive endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

What Can I Expect From IVF?

The first step in IVF involves injecting hormones so you produce multiple eggs each month instead of only one.You will then be tested to determine whether you're ready for egg retrieval.

Prior to the retrieval procedure, you will be given injections of a medication that ripens the developing eggs and starts the process of ovulation. Timing is important; the eggs must be retrieved just before they emerge from the follicles in the ovaries. If the eggs are taken out too early or too late, they won't develop normally. Your doctor may do blood tests or an ultrasound to be sure the eggs are at the right stage of development before retrieving them. The IVF facility will provide you with special instructions to follow the night before and the day of the procedure. Most women are given pain medication and the choice of being mildly sedated or going under full anesthesia.

During the procedure, your doctor will locate follicles in the ovary with ultrasound and remove the eggs with a hollow needle. The procedure usually takes less than 30 minutes, but may take up to an hour.