Your Personalized Infertility Consultation

At the time of the initial visit, you'll see either one of our nurse practitioners or one of the physicians. During that time, we will review your medical records, so hopefully they will have been sent beforehand so we'd have a chance to review them prior to you getting here. We'll go through your medical record. We'll take a history that focuses on your reproductive system. We'll do a limited exam, depending on what the particular problem is, but we will do ultrasounds at most of our initial visits so that we can get an overview of the uterus and the ovaries to see if there are any glaring problems that we need to give attention to right away. Otherwise, all of our couples go through blood testing. We test both for infectious diseases. We will test the woman for a number of hormonal assessments that pertain very specific to the reproductive cycle. We do ovarian reserve testing, which means we're looking at the quality and quantity of eggs. We will do imaging to evaluate the uterus and the fallopian tubes to make sure that they are normal, or to determine if there are any abnormalities that need to be addressed. If a male partner is involved, we will do semen analysis. After this battery of tests is complete, then we will have a couple return for a plan of care visit, at which time we go over the results of all the tests, and we discuss what our recommendations for treatment will be. We will question them about what their habits are. We concern ourselves not just with the medications that they're taking, but are they smoking? Are they drinking too much? Is there any recreational drug use? I think it goes without saying that the patient needs to bring their healthiest self to us if they can. And to the extent that they aren't, we help them to identify the areas that they need to pay attention to, like diet, exercise, clean eating, getting enough sleep. What they have control over is taking as good of care of themselves as possible. A patient knows if they're smoking too much, or they're drinking too much, or if they're smoking marijuana, or doing other recreational drugs. They know that that isn't going to benefit them. Most of the patients who come to us know that. They're very motivated to do all that they can to help this process to work. One of the things that I try to emphasize to patients when they come here is that this is a shared problem. It's not unusual for a woman to think that this is her problem, that she is the one who's damaged, she is the one that needs to be fixed. We explain to them that infertility is a couple problem. It is a couple problem. It is not one individual's problem. I'd say about 40% of the time the problem is attributed to the woman. About 40% of the time it's attributed to the man. About 20% it's a combination of the two. The fact of the matter is that they're working as a unit. We can't have one without the other. So we try to emphasize that and to make sure that both are appreciating their role in this, whether or not it is specifically their problem, or it's specifically the other's problem, because they're working together. It is the couple's problem.