Parenting Information Guide

A Little on Pregnancy

Most fertility clinics will offer you a pregnancy test a couple of weeks after your treatment but if you want to carry out yourself, home pregnancy test kits will also give you a pretty true indication at a couple of weeks. Often women overlook the fact that oftentimes when home pregnancy tests are run too quickly after treatment, they can often point to a false positive result.

If you are expecting, you should start to notice other clues such as dropping your period, sickness, sore breasts, needing to go to the toilet more frequently, tiredness, being sensitive to strong tastes and odors, as well as mood swings.

Many clinics stay in touch during the early weeks of pregnancy and do one or more ultrasound scans to ensure your foetus is growing normally. It is not uncommon however, to find fertility clinics that do not offer an aftercare service so other measures during pregnancy will have to be made.

Even if your fertility treatment is productive, don't be concerned if you are not as joyful as you thought you would be as it can take a while to adjust to the news. This is quite normal but the important thing is to learn to live with your emotions whatever they are, and to take into consideration that virtually all mums-to-be go through a number of emotions on finding out they are going to have a baby whether they have been through fertility treatment or not.

A common misconception is that a pregnancy from fertility treatment will be harder than an individual who hasn't used fertility treatment although you may feel it more emotionally unsettling. At times it may mean you need more scans or appointments at the hospital. A number of reasons exist including a past miscarriage (or stillbirths), if expecting twins, triplets (or more) not forgetting of course, your general health. The age of the expectant mother may also be a determining factor because as you age the greater your chance of complications will be.

Surprisingly there are over a million infants around the world that have been born employing fertility treatment such as IVF for instance and there is no reason why they shouldn't be healthy children. This does not mean there will not be any problems because all medical treatment and every pregnancy have some element of risk, even those conceived naturally, but thankfully most of the problems are tiny. It might be easier said and done but try to relax during the pregnancy as much as possible.

The number of women who miscarry IVF is slightly higher than following normal conception. Ordinarily there are only a couple of situations that can cause this: the first being that the majority of women that have fertility treatment have a pregnancy test in the early days of the pregnancy. Sometimes, where a woman has conceived naturally, she could have what she thinks is a late period which was really a fertilized egg which did not implant. Secondly, there is a greater chance of miscarrying as a woman ages and women who have fertility treatment are commonly older on average than those who conceive by natural means. This subject always raises many questions but they would be best answered by your own fertility clinic consultant.