You probably learnt this in grade school, but just to refresh your memory, the cervix is the gap at the bottom end of the uterus, where it meets the top end of the vagina. A healthy cervix is vital when it comes to getting and staying pregnant and delivering your baby. If there is any blockage or narrowing or any other problems the spermies might have a hard time getting past to get to the egg. You have two fallopian tubes and two ovaries, so if one is damaged you at least have the other one, but when it comes to the cervix there is only one – so best you look after it!

Some things that can go wrong at the cervix are:

· Even though you may want a baby, your cervical mucus may be unwelcomong to sperm. Normally, when you ovulate your cervical mucus (normally found at the vaginal opening) is kind of like egg white – clear, watery and stretchy. You may have problems with either the amount or the quality of cervical mucus which will make the sperms’ (rather short) life quite challenging. The cervical mucus could also have anti-sperm antibodies, which damage or kill the poor chaps on their way to the egg. Just a minor factoid while we’re on the topic, part of how hormonal contraceptives function is by making the cervical mucus thick to prevent the sperm from getting through.

· Cervical stenosis is a narrowing of the cervix which may also influence your fertility negatively. This can happen because of scarring from surgery or infection, or simply because you were born that way.

· Cervicitis is another problem concerning the cervix that could cause infertility. Basically, the word merely means that the cervix is inflamed or swollen and this will affect your fertility and your ability to carry your pregnancy for the full 40 weeks or to deliver your baby the usual way.

Looking after your cervix:

· Despite the fact that we abhor them, regular pap smears are necessary to catch cervical cancer early so that minimal treatment is required. You need to have a pap smear no less than once every two years from 18 years of age – more frequently if you are particularly at risk. Avoid cervical cancer and you’ll avoid surgical intervention too, which means that you’ll also avoid potential injury to the structure and function of the cervix. Having many sexual partners or being sexually active before 18 years of age increases your risk of cervical cancer. No, that’s not a story they invented to scare high schoolers, it’s a fact, so warn your daughters.

· Be careful, don’t have an abortion, as every time someone sticks a sharp instrument up there your chance of scarring increases. Injury to the cervix can narrow it so that it’s difficult for sperm to get through, or it may prevent the cervix from functioning correctly leading to something called an ‘incompetent cervix’ which increases your risk of complications and even miscarriage.

· Be responsible with your sex life and avoid cervicitis. You don’t want to mess with STDs! I know I said it before, but here you have it again: foreign objects up the vagina, many sexual partners, being sexually active before 18 years of age, and other high risk behaviors can all result in cervicitis and cervicitis can increase your chance of chronic pain, cervical cancer, infertility and pregnancy complications. Encourage your friends to be responsible with their sexuality as well.

If you’ve had problems with your cervix, infertility could be on the cards for you. Although prevention is better than cure, if you do have problems, don’t despair, you do have alternatives.

Here is more information on Endometriosis and Infertility. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Infertility.

There are no debates on this issue – smoking and infertility are very directly connected. I know you’re thinking how on earth you’ll give up your daily (hourly?) fix but once you hear the facts you may be able to make up your mind for good.

Did you know that all other things being the same, smokers generally take more time to get pregnant than non-smokers? I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that kissing a smoker bears a big resemblance to sucking on an ashtray, and sex drive is also influenced by smoking, both of which will cut your chances of conceiving. Your chances of getting pregnant at any given time are apparently 40% lower than someone who has never smoked, according to the BMA (British Medical Association). The BMA also assert that 120 000 cases of male impotence and 5000 miscarriages per year are caused by smoking. Smokers claim that smoking relieves stress – but from those statistics, it seems as though smoking brings about more stress than it relieves!

That does not mean that smoking can be exploited as supplementary contraception! When you hear the effect that smoking can have on your unborn child if (when) you do get pregnant, hopefully you’ll rethink that idea. Is the increased risk of miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, abnormalities like cleft lip or palate really worth it? Your baby is also more liable to be born premature and underweight – certainly not ideal – and your baby is more prone to have respiratory problems such as asthma later on. Furthermore, SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) is more frequent in households where a family member smokes. Not only will you be disadvantaging your child, but you’ll be giving yourself masses of extra stress and extra expense that you could have prevented.

It seems that it’s the woman’s eggs that are influenced by smoking, but the ovaries can also be harmed. Having the optimum estrogen levels is also essential for your fertility and smoking can affect your body’s making of estrogen. If the guy smokes then fertility is also affected, although , as with the ladies, scientists are not sure how. Sperm can be scarse and those that are there can be malformed if you smoke. Although there is not as much evidence to connect smoking and male infertility, if you think you’re let off, think again. Passive smoking is just about as harmful as active smoking for a woman’s fertility.

Smoking will definitely not improve your position if you already battle with infertility. Smokers who plan to conceive by means of IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) need almost twice as many treatments than non-smokers. At over $12 000 a time, that’s a very expensive habit! Female smokers also require higher doses of fertility drugs and the medication is still not as effective as they would be in a non-smoker.

Clearly, not all smokers are alike and your fertility will be affected by the numbers of cigarettes you smoke and the amount of time you’ve smoked for. If you quit then within a year your fertility is just about on the same level as someone who has never smoked, although some ovary damage could be irreversible. You can’t dispute with these links between smoking and infertility. Quit smoking, save great sums of money and enhance your odds of getting pregnant and having a healthy child who still has a healthy parent around when he or she has their own children.

Here is more information on Reasons for Infertility. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Infertility. 

I often wonder if working through infertility as a  Christian is easier or harder than dealing with it as a non-believer. It’s difficult to think how infertility could be part of God’s ideal plan. You trust that our wonderful God wants the best for you – he was the one who instructed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden to be fruitful and multiply. On the other, every day we see that bad things happen to good people.

There are so many stories in the Bible about couples who battled to get pregnant. Sarah and Abram had their first child when she was 90, John the Baptist was born when Elizabeth was already quite old, Rachel only had Benjamin and Joseph after a long period of infertility, it was because of her husband’s ardent prayer that Rebekah finally became pregnant and Samson’s mother also struggled with infertility for many years.

In these cases when a child was eventually born people saw it as evidence that God was there for them so if you are a believer struggling with infertility you might feel that God has abandoned you.

This idea of God is, I feel, inaccurate. As soon as you become a believer your sins are forgiven and you cannot be ‘punished’ for them.

As a Christian, infertility treatment raises some moral questions that you should consider. for instance, some Christians think that involving a third party in the conception process, for example through using donated eggs or sperm, or through surrogacy, is sinful.

Your opinion on IVF will shaped by your belief on when life begins. If you think that life begins at the moment of conception then you may not be happy with IVF (in vitro-fertilization), where many eggs are fertilized but not all of them are used. Even though you can freeze the eggs to use at a later stage, you may not end up using them. You could decide not to harvest any more eggs than you need for each round of treatment if you feel that discarding fertilized eggs is the same as abortion. You and your spouse must ask God what his will is for your situation.

One thing I can say for sure is that you must lean in to God and let this situation bring you and your spouse closer together rather than further apart. Sadly, you may well need protection from those closest to you when they ask tactlessquestions or make inappropriate comments. Some people might suggest that hidden sin is causing your infertility. Pray and ask God if there’s any part of your life that is outside of his will and be open to his nudging. If you don’t hear anything then that isn’t the problem.

Scripture says that Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous people, but despite that Elizabeth was barren (Luke 1:6-7).

Others might tell you to ‘have faith’ – Sarah had very little faith when the angels informed her that she would give brith to a son – but she still did – so I don’t think that we can solve all of life’s troubles just by ‘having faith’. Sometimes people really struggle to recognize that we inhabit a world ruined by theconsequences of sin. I’m referring to sin in general now, not each person’s individual sin. The fabric of creation changed that day in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve did exactly what God had instructed them not to do and the result was that sickness, death,affliction and infertility entered God’s perfect creation. So we suffer the consequence of that sin every day – consequences, not punishment. They are very different.

Don’t let infertility cripple you – study, pray, do whatever you can. Just know that whatever happens, if you eventually get pregnant, or adopt or choose not to have children, God is with you no matter what.

Here is Infertility Information. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Infertility.

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Would you like to know when you’re ovulating, so it is possible to get pregnant in the fastest time achievable? You can now use an ovulation calendar to function out which date you will most most likely ovulate. This is really helpful certainly for trying to get pregnant without the use of drugs or aided reproductive technologies.

You possibly can either use a free ovulation calendar on the net, or spend a couple of dollars on a desktop calculator. Some providers will charge you a monthly fee for the use of their calendar, but the end result is the same: they aid you to perform out the best time to try to conceive.

Do ovulation calendars perform? To some extent they do, but looking at two variables or the date of your last period, and your average cycle length is fairly simplistic. And we all understand that life isn’t simple!

To make sure you get pregnant within the shortest space of time, combine the use from the calendar with checking your cervix every day. Throughout ovulation, it’s soft and squishy or like your lips, but when you’re not ovulating, it feels more like the end of your nose.

You possibly can also check the mucus the cervix produces. Most days from the month, its pretty dry, thick and white. However, in the course of your most fertile time from the month, it changes to a clear, viscous fluid, that stretches many centimeters among your fingers and thumb.

One a lot more step you can take in identifying when you’re most most likely to obtain pregnant is taking your BBT daily. If you can use a good quality thermometer that can show you your temperature in 2 decimal places, you’ll get an accurate idea of when typically ovulate throughout your cycle.

Putting all of these into consideration will improve your chances of having pregnant naturally. you’ll get much much better results than from using a conception calculator by itself. Sticking at it for a few cycles will pay off in dividends, simply because the longer you do it, the additional accustomed you can get to your own cycle of ovulation and menstruation.

Of course, these tips operate fantastically if your periods are normal and you ovulate at the same time on the month. What happens if your cycle is irregular?

What you’ll need to do is to get your cycle regular again, by addressing the hormone imbalances that caused your periods to become unbalanced. The fastest, safest and most effective way to do this really is through herbalism. There are capsules you’ll be able to take that contain the exact herbs utilized for hundreds of years to help women to conceive. One such instance is FertilPlus, which comes in a male and a female formula. Obtaining your periods back to a state where they are running repeatedly will indeed guide you get pregnant as quickly as achievable.

Maybe you want to check my other guide on early signs of pregnancy and early pregnancy symptoms

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A pregnancy due date calendar is made based on the fact that an average pregnancy is usually regarded to be forty weeks from the start off of the last period. Therefore, ladies typically don’t even realize that they’re pregnant until they’re categorized as being four or a lot more weeks pregnant according to this system. Doctors and other professional medical professionals, as well as on the internet calculators, use the date of the start of your last period and add 280 days in order to come up with an estimated delivery date so they (and you) have an idea of close to when the baby will arrive.

These estimated delivery dates that you get from utilizing a pregnancy due day calendar genuinely aren’t all that accurate. Most women do not know the exact day of conception (which is why they use the commence of the last period, ladies usually have a better thought of when this was) and distinct persons have cycles of distinct lengths. Doctors normally expect babies to arrive any time from two weeks ahead of the because of date to two weeks right after the because of day.

Only a very small percentage of babies are actually born on the actual due date that the mothers were given. About five to ten percent of babies show up on this day. It is additional common for babies to be early or late.

About 30 to 40 percent of infants arrive ahead of their delivery day, which could be worrying to some women. Nonetheless, 37 weeks is considered full term, so its not a big deal to have a infant arrive a couple weeks early, and premature infants are only a quite small percentage of those that arrive early.

Babies born right after their because of day are the most typical, with about 50 percent of infants taking their own nice time to arrive. If your infant doesn’t show up around your delivery date, the doctor will monitor you closely to make sure the infant is doing well, and if it gets too late or the child starts to be distressed they will induce you.

Since a lot more infants are born on other days than about the actual day given by a because of day calendar, you must keep in mind that these are just estimates and be ready for an arrival either before or after that date.

Just thought you may be interested in reading this guide : early signs of pregnancy

And early pregnancy symptoms