BUSTED!! You will eventually conceive if you simply have lots of sex and "just relax"

In honor of National Infertility Awareness Week I will be “busting an infertility myth.” First, I wanted to thank Resolve for their unending support and love for the infertility community…it’s nice to know we have such a wonderful organization on our side…so THANK YOU!

It took me awhile to decide which myth to bust. There are so many to choose from, some have touched my life, some have not. Most of my friends who know of our struggle have been very supportive and really don’t say a lot of “strange” things when they find out that we are infertile. I do get the occasional “just adopt and then you’ll fall pregnant,” so my first reaction was to bust that myth…that adopting does not automatically make you fertile. In fact, few women who adopt go on to have children of their own…of course it happens, but it is not the result of the adoption process. Studies reveal that the rate for achieving pregnancy after adopting is the same as for those who do not adopt.

So instead I decided to go with….”just relax and have lots of sex and eventually you will become pregnant.” I HAVE personally heard this one a lot.  This statement has touched my life since beginning this journey (and even before that, because I used to think this same thing!) I feel terrible now, but about 6 years ago….waaaaaay before trying to conceive was even on our radar I asked one of DH’s friend’s wives if they were planning to have more children (they already had one little boy.) She is so sweet and now I feel like a dimwit that I asked her this. Anyway, she answered “well, we’ve been trying, but I do not have regular periods, so we are having a hard time.” My answer, you ask?! “Well, just have lots of sex and eventually it’ll work!” In theory, I was correct, but what I was not taking into consideration at the time was that it was a physical problem....PCOS? I am not 100% sure of this, but my hunch (now) is that she has PCOS. She is overweight and her cycles are irregular and long. At the time, PCOS was not even close to on my radar and I thought that lots of sex meant eventually falling pregnant. That is not the truth though. Before I bust this myth I want to say that this girl gave birth to a baby girl 2 months ago, and if you remember I asked her that question 6 years ago, so that means…it took them over 6 years to conceive #2. I’m sure they had some type of infertility treatment between now and then, but I don’t know what.

I’ve had numerous friends and family members say to me over the past 3 years “just relax, go camping, go on vacation, you’ll get pregnant,” or “well you must not be doing it at the right time, just have lots of sex and it’ll happen,” or "are you temping, are you charting, are you looking at the calendar to see when you ovulate?" The truth is, I’ll probably never be able to conceive a baby on my without medical intervention. It is impossible to conceive a baby when your body does not ovulate. Plain and simple.

What a lot of people don't understand is that it is not ideal for a man to be having sex every single day, or even every other day for days or weeks. Why you ask? Well, first of all….it is impossible. Trust me….I know this now, 2 days in a row and my DH is toast for at least a week (sorry babe, you just aren’t 19 anymore!) Plus, each time a man ejaculates his sperm count goes down, something I did not know until trying IUI (intrauterine insemination.) My DH was not supposed to ejaculate within 48 hours of our IUI because that would lower is sperm count for the actual IUI procedure. A man needs a few days to “recoup” his sperm counts. So simply trying every day is just not a good option.

After a couple has been after trying to conceive regularly for a year or more with no luck, the odds are extremely low that they will conceive on their own without medical intervention. You can “just do it” all you want, you can “just relax” all you want, you can “go camping” all you want, you can "chart and temp" all you want. But, the truth is once you’ve been trying regularly for a year…..most likely there is a problem (most likely, a physical one) that is out of your control and must be treated before you will conceive. Of course, there are always those few couples that DO conceive on their own after a year, but they are rare.

So, the next time you hear of someone trying to conceive….know that if they’ve been at it for over a year…relaxing, going on vacation or having a lot of sex is probably not the answer. The answer is probably something that needs to be investigated and treated by a reproductive endocrinologist.

For more information on infertility, please click here. For more information on National Infertility Awareness Week, please click here.