“The JOY of motherhood is in living the moments and grows with the child.”
Motherhood is the gift of magical experience. At least once in a lifetime, most women prefer to have this experience. Both male and female reproductive organs need to be healthy and functional to conceive a baby naturally. Female Infertility is the reason even after regular intercourse over a year there is no success for conceiving.
Every woman might not be having this gift of fertility in them or their partner, but still, want to have the child of their DNA. With advanced technology, infertility can be diagnosed with great care. Before knowing the Female infertility treatment, let us understand the scenario of infertility in women.
Causes Of Female Infertility:
There might be numerous Causes for infertility in women such as,
PCOS (Polycystic ovarian syndrome)
POI (Primary Ovarian Insufficiency)
Pelvic inflammatory diseases
Overweight
Endometriosis
Ectopic pregnancy
Physical problems with the uterus
Uterine fibroids
Fertility can also affect women because of the above-mentioned medical causes. Few more aspects can also change the women’s ability to have a baby, such as
Drinking
Smoking
Drugs
Radiation
Age (>35)
Poor Diet
Excessive Stress
STD’s (Sexually transmitted diseases)
Statistics say that the one-third of the infertility cases originate in female and other one-third of the infertility problems are of the male, and the remaining one-third is due to male and female unknown issues.
Female infertility treatments are slightly challenging to diagnose as it is off on many factors. Age factor also plays an important role in conceiving a healthy baby.
Women with the age of 35 and above have less chance than women with age of ’20s. With the increasing age, the eggs produced by the female reproductive system will be weak and also the high-blood pressure may cause problems in conceiving or carrying the child. Doctors suggest having the baby in the ’20s for higher chances of healthy offspring.
Diagnosing Female Infertility:
Female Infertility Treatment can initiate after diagnosing the exact problem of the female reproductive organ. Few tests are conducted by your gynaecologist to ensure the actual problem and start treating as per the concern. The tests for diagnosis are;
Physical Examining:
Physical Examining includes recording the woman’s basal body temperature to know whether she is ovulating or not. It also detailed medical history to identify other health issues.
Ovulation Test:
To know the presence of an Ovulation hormone this test is conducted. At home use, medical kits are also available for doing the tests. Anovulation test may help in understanding the existence of ovulation hormone – progesterone, is produced after ovulating.
Hysterosalpingography (HSG):
This test determines the normal functioning of fallopian tubes. It is an X-ray procedure in which a catheter inserted into the opening of the cervix through the vagina, and then a liquid containing Iodine is spilt into the fallopian tube through the catheter.
The passage of the fluid flows through fallopian tubes and flushes out at the end if they are open. If any abnormalities found further tests are required. In rare cases, this test alone can resolve infertility concerned with fallopian tubes by opening them.
Transvaginal Ultrasonography:
An ultrasound transducer is applied in the vagina to visualize organs in the pelvic cavity. This medical ultrasonography passes ultrasound waves across the vaginal wall to know about the functioning of tissues.
Ovarian Reserve Testing:
Eggs are the source for conceiving a baby. Brain cells stimulate the signals for ovaries to produce an egg once the ovulation takes place. To have a healthy baby the quality and quantity of eggs available for ovulation need to be known. This test determines the eggs probability.
Other Hormone Testing:
Thyroid and pituitary hormones need to be functioning normally for fertility. Other hormone tests include checking the levels of ovulatory and other hormones which control the reproductive process.
Imaging Tests:
Normal ultrasound cannot determine the issue of the uterus. A pelvic ultrasound looks for uterine or fallopian tubes in detail.
Genetic Testing:
This testing determines whether any genetic issue is the cause of infertility.
As per your case, a gynaecologist will be diagnosing you. Along with these your partner also needs to be tested for infertility to ensure the exact reason.
Treatments For Infertility:
Sree Fertility Centre has the following procedures for infertilities:
IUI:
Intrauterine Insemination is a treatment for fertility; this involves placing sperm inside a woman’s uterus for facilitating fertilization. The chances of fertilization can be increased by eventually increasing the count of sperm towards the fallopian tubes.
IVF- ET (Test Tube Baby):
When sperm is attached to the egg from ovarian inside the body it can be called natural fertilization. In Vitro Fertilization, It is extracting mature egg and developing it with sperm in the laboratory.
An egg thus removed from women’s ovum, and then it is combined with the sperm outside the body. Initially, the fertilization can get done by keeping an egg containing the sperm in a tube containing liquid and letting it grow for 3 to 4 days. This fertilized egg will get implanted into the uterus.
ICSI:
Intracytoplasmic sperm injection is the process to inject a single sperm directly into the egg. This process is helpful when the male partner does not have enough sperm count or zero sperm. When this case occurs then sperm is extracted from the epididymis of male and injected into the female organ.
IMSI:
Intracytoplasmic Morphologically selected Sperm Injection is the advanced technology of ICSI. This process increases the sperm count and picks the best looking or healthier sperm and injects into an egg.
IVM:
In Vitro Maturation of Oocytes is the process similar to IVF, the only thing that differs is it collects an immature egg while a woman is still ovulating. Here she might not take any drugs as of IVF.
Oocyte Vitrification:
It is an advanced process in which eggs need to be extracted from ovaries, and they need to freeze for later use. A frozen egg is combined with sperm and injected into the uterus when they need to have a baby. It improves the reproductive potential of women.
Blastocyst Transfer:
In this process, the matured egg is combined with the sperm and maintained in the laboratory for a more extended period for studying the suitable or stronger embryo.
Later at the blastocyst stage, the embryo is injected into the uterus. It helps in having the success rate of the healthier baby.
FET:
Frozen Embryo Transfer is the use of advanced technology in the IVF and other treatments. The water is taken out from the egg, and then eggs are stored in the liquid nitrogen. Only the strong embryos can be frozen. The pregnancy rate for the fresh embryos and the frozen are relatively the same.
Assisted Laser Hatching:
It is the process where embryologist uses a micromanipulation method to create a small hole in zona pellucida and implants the embryo. This process may be, but fertility experts suggest that it has a high rate of implantation compared to IVF.
TESA:
If the male has zero sperm count then the sperm is extracted from testes. In Testicular Sperm Aspiration, sperm is extracted from testes using needle aspiration technique. Thus retrieved immature sperm are matured in vitro and injected into the female oocytes with the ICSI method. This method may be costly, but the success rate is 20-25% as per the experts.
Dealing with infertility for the couples may be exhausting and frustrated. The advancement in science made infertility treatment easy. These treatments can be the ray of hope for experiencing motherhood and giving birth to offspring.