Who can Diagnose Fertility Problems?

***VIDEO***

Once you’ve decided that you should seek help, where do you start? Well, in the UK most general practitioners will know that they need to investigate patients after around about 12 months of trying. Seeing a family doctor or a GP with a special interest in women’s health or reproductive endocrinology is always a good starting point. So making that initial investigation and conversation perhaps with the receptionist in the practice to find out who’s most interested in this area of medicine is a great place to start.

Seeing someone with a special interest in reproductive endocrinology and with the interest in the important hormones and the tests required to assess a heterosexual couple trying to conceive is absolutely crucial to having those correct tests done at the right time, early on, and appropriately so that you can get the most information about your own fertility.

As a fertility specialist meeting a couple for the first time who are trying to conceive, it’s important to try and understand which of the factors are important or perhaps which of the factors are hurdles to this couple’s success. Let’s recap because there are a number of things we’ve already mentioned which are really important to successful fertilisation of an egg and implantation and conception.

You need to have healthy, good quality eggs. You need sperm, you need working fallopian tubes. You need a receptive uterus, and you also need that critical balance of hormones through the menstrual cycle to control the release of eggs.