Travelling during IVF Treatment

By Dr. Shobha Gupta 

Many questions keep pondering us during IVF treatment. One of them would be should I travel when

my IVF treatment is going on…? Many couples ask me, if they can take vacations and travel before, after, or during treatment. Actually, IVF medications and procedures can interfere dramatically with your day-to-day life. In all honesty, the bottom line is better safe than sorry. 

It would be quite difficult for one to travel during the medication phase of the IVF process. Regardless of your medication schedule, which is likely to be sturdy, you will be seeing your doctor on a regular basis for monitoring appointments that include blood work and ultrasounds. It is likely that you won’t be able to get away during this phase of your treatment. Keep in mind, you also don’t know how your body is going to react to the medications, you might want to be near your doctor just in case you have some bad side effects or concerns. 

The next part of the IVF process includes two procedures; egg retrieval and embryo transfer. You won’t be able to find here to travel at all. Some IVF patients do travel from their home quite some distance to seek treatment in a larger town or city. This type of traveling is okay, as you will need to travel back and forth between your home and treatments. Some doctors do recommend a hotel stay for a night or two immediately following each procedure. 

So you are thinking to yourself, after all that I have gone through I need a little time to get away. Dependent on your doctor, you typically will

Most common causes of female infertility

A woman’s fertility is influenced by her age: female fertility peaks in the early to mid 20’s and declines slowly until the age of 35, However, there are a number of younger women who, despite their perceived fertility, have difficulty in conceiving.
It is generally advised that women under the age of 35 age wait for one year before investigating why they are failing to conceive.

There are two types of infertility:

Primary infertility: where someone who has never conceived a child in the past has difficulty conceiving.

Secondary infertility: where a person has had one or more pregnancies in the past, but is having difficulty conceiving again. It is estimated that 1/3 of the causes of infertility are associated with male factors such as poor sperm quality, 1/3 attributed to female factors. Three of the most common conditions that contribute to early female infertility are pelvic inflammatory disease, endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome.

Mid-thirties and Infertility: Age does matters

These days more couples are delaying starting family into early mid-thirties’. The golden age for women

to conceive in their third decade of life that is their twenties. As more women are delaying getting pregnant, it is even more important that they try and maintain healthy life style to maintain optimum fertility.

Age and Fertility

Women’s age plays an important role in their fertility, women are born with around 4-5 million eggs which remain in a quiet stage until they reach teenage years. From teenage onwards, there is a slow and steady loss of the follicles and only 400,000 – 500,000 follicles remain. The process of the drop in quality and quantity of eggs gathers pace around the mid-thirties’. It gains even more pace in late thirties and later as women enter into their 40’s. The chances of getting pregnant for women in their 40’s can be as low as 5% when compared to