Dr. Sudha Upasnik

While you are too busy running a rat-race, chasing education, career, and everything extravagant and lavish, you might be slowly slipping away on your chances of parenting a baby. Find that strange and wayward? Well, your fertility might have already started taking a dip. The chances of conception drop down to less than 10% as a woman approaches the mid-thirties and a man, mid-forties. This is because increasing age takes a toll on the quality and the quantity of eggs produced. Chromosomal problems accompanied by risk of miscarriages tend to bring down pregnancy rates. So much so, that a child, born to older parents, might have higher risks of suffering from learning difficulties, psychological disorders and even autism. Not only age, but one’s innate lifestyle habits and practices can also be a few reasons behind infertility.

1. Age and Fertility: Women’s fertility starts to decline when women are in their early 30s (and the decline speeds up post-35). Men’s fertility starts to decline at 45 years of age. As well as declining fertility, there is an increased risk of pregnancy complications for older mothers and and with older fathers, an increased risk of the child having autism spectrum disorders, mental health disorders and learning difficulties.

2. Weight and Fertility: Obesity, owing to a sedentary lifestyle and an unhealthy diet, can cause and aggravate hormonal irregularities in both the genders. For men, these imbalances result in coital problems and dip in the sperm count, while for women, they pose threats such as miscarriages, risks of a still-born child and other pregnancy complications. Women who are obese and smoke are more than twice as likely as healthy weight women to have a baby with congenital heart disease.

3. Substance Abuse: Smoking and excessive consumption of alcohol cause early menopause in women and reduce fertility rates in both the genders.

4. The Appropriate Timing: If you fail to keep a track of the most fertile period of your menstrual cycle based on the days you ovulate, you might miss out on a good chance of getting pregnant. Pregnancy is technically possible during the five days before ovulation and the day of ovulation. The likelihood of actually becoming pregnant, though, is dramatically increased if you have intercourse in the three days leading up to and including ovulation.

5. Stress: In today’s times, some amount of stress is unavoidable. However, being subject to constantly high levels of stress on a daily basis ups the secretion of the stress hormone, ‘cortisol’; that eventually takes a toll on one’s libido, thus wreaking havoc on one’s chances and aspirations of parenting a child. Also, what too much stress does is that it mars personal relationships, thus further increasing one’s woes.

6. Pollutants: With rapid urbanization and unchecked industrialization, the world you live in was never more polluted than now. Such increased and consistent exposure to pollution makes one all the more vulnerable to infertility. If you wish to discuss about any specific problem, you can consult a gynaecologist.