The bisphenol A (BPA) story is not yet over. More revelations about this chemical found in plastics are coming in as scientists are stepping up on BPA research. The recent undesirable BPA effect is female infertility and this was reported by Yale University researchers at the recent meeting of the Endocrine Society.

The Yale researchers have observed that when pregnant mice were exposed to BPA, the genetic chemistry of their female offspring is irreversibly altered. The researchers have the identified the gene in question as HOXA10, which regulates the normal development of the uterus and fertility, not only in mice, but also in humans. BPA sometimes plays havoc with the gene’s switching on and off. They can conceive but their ability to carry the pregnancy to full term is compromised, leading to permanent fertility loss.

In a way, this doesn’t surprise me, considering that BPA is an endocrine disruptor and mimics the effect of estrogen, and therefore plays havoc with hormonal balance.

However, this isn’t the only bad news about BPA.

University of Cincinnati researchers reported irregular heart rhythms in female mice (but not male!) exposed to BPA.

Now, if ever health authorities claim again that current BPA exposure is too low to cause these effects, University of Missouri-Columbia experts will definitely show their new estimate that BPA exposure among Americans is much higher that the so-called maximum safe dose.

These recent findings are alarming themselves but what concerns me are the following:

• Babies in the uterus are exposed and possibly already damaged by BPA even before they are born.
• Females seem to be strongly affected by BPA, because of its capacity to mimic estrogen.

In other words, BPA is affecting our reproductive cycle and will be affecting or has already affected the next generation of mothers.

The scientists at the Endocrine Society Meeting issued a scientific statement declaring that BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals in food, water and consumer products represent a “significant concern to public health.”

I really hope that the health authorities are listening.

A prescription drug is meant to be taken only by the individual it was prescribed for. In other words, it’s a person-specific thing. Yet, this study reports that the incidence of sharing or borrowing prescription medications is quite high. The practice has become a major medical and public health problem.

What is even more disturbing is the fact that the highest incidence occurred among women of child-bearing potential. The results of the study, based on a survey of more than 25,000 people of different ages and gender, are as follows:

• 28.8% of women report having shared prescription medications. Only 26.5% of men surveyed do the same.
• More than a third (36.5%) of reproductive-aged women (7,500 women aged 18 to 44 years old) follows this practice. Only 19.5% of other aged women do the same.

The most common medications involved are anti-allergy drugs and analgesics (anti-pain). The risks of taking medications that were not prescribed by your doctor specifically for you are as follows:

• Drug interactions with other drugs and/or foodstuffs and drinks
• Drug allergies
• Development of antibiotic resistance
• Risk of addiction

In addition, certain drugs may have undesirable effects on people of child-bearing potential.

Certain drugs, we know, can have adverse effects on the development of embryos and fetuses when taken by pregnant women. What is less well-known is that there are drugs which can cause harm to babies of women who are still trying to get pregnant. Some drugs have very long half-life and can therefore persist in the body for long periods of time. Other drugs may also have effects on fertility, sexuality, and the reproductive system.

So, next time you are tempted to borrow, share, or lend prescription drugs, please think twice…

According to medical statistics, lack of ovulation, or ovulation irregularity is the most commonly cited reasons for infertility. Now, researchers in Canada and France, have successfully found the gene that controls ovulation. This is an exciting discovery, for it means that drugs meant to control and regulate ovulation can be more targeted. This may be the beginning for drugs specifically for ovulation problems causing infertility in women, or the flip side of the coin, to more efficiently inhibit ovulation.
The Lrh1 gene seems to be tied closer to fertility however, according to Bruce D. Murphy, director the Animal Research Center at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and an adjunct ob/gyn professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the Universite de Montreal:

“Until this point, the role of Lrh1 in female fertility was unclear, but we have found the gene regulates multiple mechanisms of ovulation and may affect fertilization.”

The gene, called Lrhi, was first found in medically tested mice, before isolated in the human female. To prove correlation, the scientists are now embarking on studying ovarian cells from fertility programs to see if there is an absence or a strange mutation on the same gene.

There’s been much fuss lately over whether coffee is safe to drink during pregnancy. A summary of the current research: it’s probably safe in moderation, but don’t drink 47 cokes or ten gallons of coffee a day if pregnant.

However, doctors in the Netherlands have discovered the drinking coffee before you get pregnant may be harming your chances of conceiving. Wannabe moms who drank more than four cups of coffee a day had a 26% lower chance of conceiving naturally. Compare that to the damaging effects of smoking – reducing chances by 44%, of being overweight – reducing changes of conceiving by 29%, or drinking alcohol more than three times a week – 26% less likely to conceive.

Doctors already knew that being overweight, smoking and drinking all affect fertility, but are surprised that caffeine has comparable effects.

Conversely, fathers-to-be might benefit by drinking coffee. Men with drowsy sperm can wake them up with a cup of joe, which seems to increase sperm mobility i.e. bettering the chances of the little wiggly things getting to the egg, instead of giving up or getting a bit tired and needing to sit down and then forgetting what they are supposed to do on the way.

Random caffeine fact: spiders can’t spin a web after imbibing caffeine. They get all frantic and confused, and make something that looks like toddler art rather than a web. Spiders high on marijuana or LSD did a better job than the ones who’d drunk lattes. NASA did this research. Aren’t you glad your tax dollars are spent so wisely? (And no, my toddler isn’t on drugs.)

So for those trying to get pregnant, when you brew up a cup of coffee or find a fridge pack of Pepsi has found it’s way into your shopping cart (sneaky little things, those fridge packs) give it to your man, and hopefully it will benefit you both. And you’ll fill up the favor bank for exchanging for foot-rubs and back massages when you do get pregnant.

I saw an article yesterday about the clash between our modern culture and our biology. Basically, the author had interviewed a lot of women trying to conceive later in life and came to the shocking conclusion which many of us ‘older‘ women have already discovered: reproducing when you are nearing 40 is not as easy as reproducing in your 20’s.

Sure, we all know that our biological clocks wind down as we age-or so we‘ve been told. When I talk with my friends who are attempting to have a child later in life, they all are aware of the facts. Yet, without a doubt, almost all of them still cling to the fact that somehow they’ll be different. The studies MIGHT say whatever they might say, but nevertheless, the great majority of women want to believe that somehow, they are immune to the realities of that reproductive time clock.

I call this ‘The Star Trek Effect’and I’ve seen examples of this effect in other areas of my life. For example, my two oldest children have a degenerative eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa and are slowly going blind. I can’t tell you the number of people I’ve met or talked with that are shocked, absolutely and utterly shocked, that ‘they’haven’t found a cure for this type of blindness yet. Ah, ‘The Star Trek Effect’in action! Humanity somehow believes that there is a cure for everything, and that science one day will give us all the answers we need if we only do enough exploration and are open to learning. Perhaps in the distant future this will be so, but for now, science is woefully lacking in some areas.

Sometimes ‘they’can’t cure the disease. Sometimes, having a baby isn’t as simple as one would think it should be. Sometimes, ‘they’can’t fix it.

Right now, I personally know of three women who are waging war with their biological clocks. Two of those women have invested numerous hours and dollars in their war. One woman is just beginning her battle. All of them, despite the harsh reality of their situation, believe that somehow, they will be the one to beat the clock. They will be having that healthy, beautiful child they want-and soon too. They are positive that medical science will have that answer for them too, if they need it. All they have to do is invest a little more time and money to the cause.

As we approach Mother’s Day, my heart breaks for these women, and all the other women who struggle with fertility issues, no matter what their circumstances.

Since I am most likely new to the majority of you reading this blog, please allow me a paragraph to introduce myself. I write under the pseudonym SciFi Dad, but you can call me SFD for short. I am a Canadian father to a three year old girl as well as a gender-to-be-determined fetus whose arrival is currently pegged at early October. (The Canadian thing means that I will have what most of you, as Americans, will believe to be typographical errors, usually insertions of the letter “u”. Try not to find my spelling humourous.) I have been blogging for nearly two years at my personal blog, and have recently started guest blogging for Babies Online – The Blog. I was asked to write from the dad’s perspective (which is far easier for me than from the mom’s perspective, believe it or not) about topics that would appeal to their audience.

For my inaugural post, I have decided to share our struggles with secondary infertility.

When my wife and I decided we were ready to leave the DINK life behind and start trying for a baby, we did not have a long wait. Our second month found us pregnant with the child who would eventually become the daughter I mentioned above. We had friends who struggled with fertility, but the experience was completely foreign to us.

When our daughter turned one, we decided we would begin trying again for a second a few months later. Unfortunately, the start of those efforts was delayed by an injury (I broke my ankle), so my daughter was almost 16 months in July of 2006 when we began trying again. Now, as you have read above, our story had a happy ending, although it took a year and a half to get there.

What is interesting is that if you asked my wife, she would tell you we had been trying for a year and a half before conceiving. However, if you asked me, I would have said a few months. Why the discrepancy? Because in June of 2006 my in-laws began living with us periodically while their new home was constructed. They slept at our house for three nights at a time every few weeks, usually timing their visits perfectly with my wife’s ovulation cycle. And while at first we valiantly tried to make the arrangement work, we eventually just felt like a couple of teenagers trying to do it quietly so their parents didn’t catch them. Combine that inability to properly schedule our efforts with the fact that my in-laws are not the easiest guests to have around, and you have a cocktail for failure that lasted until the middle of October, 2007 (when mercifully, their home was completed).

So when my wife started investigating her fertility in the fall of 2007, I gently suggested that perhaps her reduced stress level and our newfound freedom in our home would result in success. However, she genuinely thought something might be wrong, so she had blood work and some other tests done, but they showed no signs of a cause. She proceeded to take non-traditional steps, including acupuncture and seeing a naturopath, without success. By the time she got to the point of investigating my part in our inability, it was December, and I deferred providing a specimen until the new year, explaining to my doctor my belief that while my in-laws were guests our efforts “didn’t count”, and therefore we had only been trying for two months. My wife had her last period January 1, 2008.

According to the reading we both did while we were trying, secondary infertility is quite common, and some couples never actually conceive a second time; it’s difficult not to feel like something is broken when you’ve got one child and cannot give them a sibling. We were fortunate to eventually conceive. However, it also goes to show how much external factors can influence fertility. My wife had cut out caffeine (a trying time for everyone in our family, not to mention the neighbours, phone solicitors, and retail personnel), alcohol, and any other thing she could find a source online that told her she would conceive if she reduced her intake of. We trended her temperature for months and months, trying (as best as we could) to catch her ovulation date. In short, we weren’t just haphazardly trying; we were doing everything we could do from a purely natural standpoint. But it wasn’t until we could control her (and to a less significant point my) stress levels that we were able to conceive.

By no means do I think that stress is the key to fertility; that was not the point of this post. I just wanted to share our experience with the intention of opening a dialog with the readers. Are you experiencing secondary infertility? What steps have you taken to improve your odds at conceiving a sibling for your child?

Source:

Secondary infertility

(Note that the previous link is not the only source for information about secondary infertility on the web. A simple search using Google or some other search engine will yield pages of results. Also note that for the most part, this is a personal and anecdotal piece, not intended to be taken as scientific or medical fact.)

Is there a difference in sexual preferences among women depending on their marital status?

Yes – according to a recent report in Psychological Science. Sexual preferences of married women are actually linked to their menstrual cycles. During fertile periods, these women are mostly attracted to single men. However, during their periods of infertility, sexual preference shifts to married men. What is more interesting is that this instinctive shift in sexual preference is not evident among single women.

Italian scientists attribute this to a behavioral pattern inherited from our early ancestors. This now manifests as a subconscious knowledge that married men are less likely to engage in extramarital affairs than unattached men. Furthermore, the risk of getting caught is also higher.

Source:

Nature News, 26 February 2008

According to USA Today and the National Center for Health Statistics, fertility rates are on the rise across the country. This is stark contrast to other developed countries where the rate is dropping. Rising rates not only mean more babies are coming into the world, as a country we will be able to support the elderly population and replace the workforce openings they leave behind.

An interesting point in the article is how babies are considered luxury goods and that more stay-at-home mothers are having more kids.

Kids as luxury goods. Is that what inspires celebrities to have babies – the ultimate in luxury items? Does that in turn inspire fashion followers to pursue the latest in accessories? So to be in with the crowd you need an oversized designer handbag, skinny jeans and a mini-me?

That explains Paris Hilton making a plan to have a baby this year. But really, would pampered accessories do a good job of taking care of the elderly and how likely are they to contribute to the workforce?

As a mom of two under four; we are fashionable only when no one has been allowed to have food or drink until we get to our destination and when clothing is not placed on the child or mommy until right before we walk out the door.

Are the girls luxury goods? Well if you look at them economically – you spend so much to raise them, to increase their value as people and contributors to society in the hopes that they will take care of you if you need them.

I’m going to dive right into something very personal with you. My wife and I struggled mightily to have a child, so much so that we invoked the involvement of specialists of female torture called embryologists and other fancy names. Yes, we went down the in-vitro fertilization path, much to the dismay of our bank account and our general emotional health. This was as difficult a time in our lives as I think we could possibly stand.

In the midst of our fickle fertility foxtrot, we started to become a little more aware and a little more sensitive to our surroundings.

For years now, one of our favorite places to eat in our hometown is a Cantonese restaurant which we affectionately call ‘Sam’s’ because that’s the name of the cook and co-owner. It has a more formal name, The New Peking Restaurant, but ‘Sam’s’ is much more efficient among friends. His wife, Jessica, is the main waitress and hostess. They have a teenage daughter who occasionally works at the restaurant, as well as a toddler who makes occasional appearances.

Sam’s is housed in a ramshackle former single-family home on a busy street sandwiched in between an historic neighborhood featuring rows of early 1900’s craftsman-style homes and less savory quick-lube shops, car washes, and motels that rent by the week. The exterior is in desperate need of repair. The cedar shingle roof likely carried a thirty year guarantee about fifty years ago and the siding hasn’t seen a fresh coat of paint over a decade. The interior is eclectic with traditional Chinese decor flanked by things such as giant Heineken cardboard cutouts.

But the look and feel of Sam’s isn’t the draw, it’s the food and their wonderful personalities that bring you back. While I don’t know the story of Sam and Jessica, I can almost guarantee their real names are not Sam and Jessica. They likely migrated here as adults, evidenced by a still-present language barrier, but they definitely get by on the English they do know. Sam is roughly 5′ 6′ and sinewy – he appears to have about 3% body fat – and he never stops smiling. He is always having fun with his customers, complete with a biting sense of humor. Upon each visit, you can be assured of a personal visit from Sam to your table. Chances are if you’ve been there a couple of times, he’ll even remember your name.

By now you’ve got to be wondering what the heck Sam’s has got to do with kids, babies, or fertility. Allow me to get to the point. For my wife and me, Sam’s became an ongoing painful joke of sorts – a microcosm of implicit and unknowing irreverence towards our plight. For years, Sam and Jessica would ask us the same questions, but what was always in good fun became fairly painful as we began learning the challenges we faced in creating offspring.

‘Michael, Michael, how are you?’ Sam asks enthusiastically.

‘I’m well Sam, how are you?’

‘Oh, good good!’ he responds, eyes widening with excitement. ‘And you…you are looking so beautiful!’ he says to my wife – a typical salutation we had become accustomed to.

‘You have baby?’ he asks.

‘No, Sam – no baby.’

‘ohhh, no baby? You like borrow my baby? Maybe you like and you have one?’ he proposes.

We laugh, but of course, we had heard this sales pitch a dozen times by now.

Sam slides over towards my wife, gesturing towards me he says, ‘Why he give you no baby? He seem like good, strong husband – should give you baby!’

‘Oh, maybe someday Sam.’ She said.

Just tell him my boys are worthless and see what he does, I think to myself…

‘Okay then, enjoy your dinner. Thank you for coming.’

Sam’s barbs were all in good fun, but if his Mongolian Beef dish wasn’t so good, I can’t say we would keep coming back for the punishment. As we recover with some tea, Jessica brings the traditional egg-flower soup for my wife and hot-and-sour soup for me.

‘HI MIKE!.’

Jessica was as pleasant as could be, but if I could bestow two new characteristics on her, it would be a voice that was several octaves lower than her current dead-waking-shrill and that she would learn the definition of ‘inside voice.’ But we loved her nonetheless.

‘YOU HAVE BABY???’

Kill me, I think.

‘no, no baby’ I say.

‘NO BABY’ WHY NO BABY???’

Kill me, now…

‘oh, we’ve got a dog that keeps us pretty busy,’ I say.

‘OKAY, ENJOY!!!’

How are you, do you have a baby, enjoy your meal. It was the same recipe each visit, whether we were dining in or taking out. As our struggle to procreate wore on, the ‘WHY NO BABY? mantra became a bit of comic relief every time we were reminded of our predicament by chance or by people too ignorant or insensitive to know better. It helped us find humor in what wasn’t funny at all.

In that way, Sam’s was really a blessing for us.