Newspapers greet Cam and Sam’s baby cam

The headline writer’s had a carte blanche for silly headlines  recently when the shallow David Cameron and his wife announced their happy news that they were bringing a baby on to the campaign trail.   I suppose it would be churlish to think it was yet another publicity stunt from the shallow man – but it can’t do him any harm in the ratings.

More interesting was his sound bite that sometimes it takes longer than you might think for the stork to drop its little parcel down the chimney.  Some of us groaned inwardly and hoped Cameron’s grip of where recessions and crises come from is firmer than his knowledge of where babies come from.

Others though dipped into the issue of infertility – and came up with some surprising statistics.  Apparently infertility is more common than diabetes.  And there are just as many newly-diagnosed cases of infertility every year as there are of coronary heart disease.  Yet nobody is talking about it.

We are all being encouraged to go to the doctor to see if we are at risk from breast cancer and heart disease.  But you’ll wait a long time before you hear or see the government urging you to go and see the doctor with your infertility problem.

Another little scandal luring in the healthcare woodwork is IVF.   A Norwegian study has recently revealed that waiting for IVF is just as likely to result in pregnancy as IVF itself.  Which means that the NHS is enriching fertility clinics at our expense for achieving not very much at all.

Another issue is the vogue for green thinking and fear of global warming.  Surely the best way to save the planet if you believe in global warming is to not bring quite so many people into the world.  And perhaps politicians who preach about global warming  have a responsibility to do exactly that.

IVF lottery hits the headlines

I almost choked on my coffee and croissants when I read the Sunday Times this morning.  Couples are being invited to enter a lottery to have some ultra-expensive IVF.  I suppose it is  slightly better than IVF on the NHS – because I am not sure that we should be seeing our taxes spent on people having children when NICE are in the business of denying sick people a chance of life because of cost.

I was surprised to see that infertility is such a problem.  It seems that as many as one in six couples are having trouble conceiving.  This strikes me as extraordinary when we have it drummed into us from an early age about the importance of contraception.

But back to IVF.  How can it be a panacea for so many childless couples?  Surely the first port of call is education.  Because apparently a woman can only conceive for about 3 or 4 days every month.  So it follows that for over 3 weeks of every monthly cycle there is nothing much you can do – and there is nothing to get stressed and worried about – until next time.

Now admittedly I am not a doctor – but the key to couples having babies is surely to know and understand their cycles.  As one of the key problems associated with infertility is an irregular cycle – then simply knowing when ovulation occurs is a big step forward – because you can plan your love life around when there is trhe best chance of conception.

Last year there was a real breakthrough in home fertility monitoring by some scientists from the University of Cambridge.  Now their invention is on the market – DuoFertility.  Not only can DuoFertility  predict fertile days simply and accurately, it is backed with a comprehensive fertility expert support programme.  This means you not only have the most advanced and accurate monitor on the market – you have the reassurance of  having your own team of highly qualified fertility experts.

I see from the newspapers that DuoFertility is at least as effective as IVF at 1/10^th of the price.  To my mind that is a better deal than an IVF lottery.

Children are a Costly Business

What do you get for £200,000 nowadays?   Not a lot it seems as this is allegedly the price of having a child nowadays.   I am not quite sure just how they arrived at such an eye-watering figure – but presumably it doesn’t include designer baby wear or champagne instead of baby milk.

All of which got me wondering why is it that some people are so determined to have children.  We spend all our teenage years being urged to ‘be careful’  - then apparently millions of us then spontaneously suffer fertility problems when we try and have a baby.  Now we are told one in six couples have difficulty conceiving.  Although I suppose on the plus side striving for a baby does have its moments.

All of which brings me to the tricky subject of IVF. It costs £5000 for one course – and involves all sort of unpleasant procedures.  Up to three courses are necessary for success apparently.  Yet the NHS only funds one treatment.  Which kind of suggests either the NHS is a heartless organisation.  Or the government has decided that the NHS is not here to provide babies.

But if IVF is so unpleasant, why are there so many couples queuing up at private infertility clinics to pay through the nose for treatment?   Maybe they haven’t heard of the answer to fertility problems called Duofertility that was in the news recently.

Duofertility is the brainchild of a group of Cambridge University scientists – and is so effective that they promise to refund your money if you don’t get pregnant in one year.  Interestingly Duofertility is also proving to be at least as effective as IVF for couples experiencing  real difficulty in conceiving at a tenth of the cost.

As Duofertility is as simple as wearing a patch – and offers a stylish hand-held device that tell you when you are fertile up to a week in advance I know which I would rather try.  And whilst £500 might seem rather a lot to try and have a baby, maybe now we know that actually having a baby costs £200,000 – I guess by that yardstick it is a bit of a bargain