IVF Prep

Since I’ve got a long 7 months before my appointment with my new RE I’ve been researching things to do to improve the odds of success of an IVF cycle, and starting to implement the changes. If we’re going to spend so much money on doing IVF I want to know that I’ve done everything possible to be successful.

As a scientist I have been trying to focus on peer-reviewed scientific evidence and not anecdotal evidence. I recently re-read “It Starts With The Egg” by Rebecca Fett, which is a great book about things you can do to improve egg quality. Rebecca has actually gone through IVF, and she has a science background, so the information she presents in the book is backed my scientific research demonstrating that doing these things does improve egg quality/odds of success. The scientific references are all listed at the end of the book, and the book itself is written in non-technical language, so it should be understandable. While I was reading the chapters on potential reproductive hazards that you could be using daily (think BPA) a study on reducing phthalate, paraben and phenol exposure in adolescent girls (http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1510514) was listed in the eTOC of one of the journals I subscribe to. After reading the study and the book I made it a quest to remove these items from the personal care items I use. In terms of makeup and skin care it was fairly easy since I had already been moving away from drug store brands to hypoallergenic products which already tend to avoid the use of parabens or phthalates. Other items have been a bit more challenging. As I was looking for a new deodorant (which was a challenge, but I found Tom’s of Maine which seems to be free of everything I wanted to avoid, and more than twice the price of my old deodorant) I got angry. Angry that people out there are getting pregnant simply because they missed a birth control pill or had a condom break, angry that people are doing all the “bad” things – drinking more than 1 cup of coffee a day, drinking alcohol, eating the “wrong” things, using whatever personal care items they want – and here I am, worrying that my shampoo or deodorant is keeping me from getting pregnant.