Taking control of your fertility

Understanding your own body’s cycle is the best way to know when you are most fertile. This will be around the point each month when you ovulate – for more on this, see Five Signs You Are Ovulating.

You can make a note of these signs and create your own visual diary so you can identify the pattern of your ovulation. This is called charting.

Although ‘fertility’ is an issue usually discussed by couples who are having problems getting pregnant , it’s a good idea even for women who are only just starting to try for a baby to be more in touch every month with when they are fertile and when they are not.

Every month there is only a short period of time in which an egg can be successfully fertilised and if there is no sperm present during this ‘TTC window’ then another cycle will go by before you get the chance to try to get pregnant again.

High tech fertility tracking

Charting isn’t always that easy for everyone, but there are other ways in which you can use the internet to help put your profile together.

FertilityFlower.com

FertilityFlower.com is a website where women sign up, enter details of their monthly cycles and then the system can help them more clearly identify patterns that will indicate when they are most fertile.

It uses the ‘sympto-thermal’ method – a natural technique where women graph their temperature upon waking and monitor other fertility symptoms (like cervical fluid, cervical position, etc.) for indications of impending ovulation.

FertilityFlower.com has a unique way of displaying the temperature graph and cervical fluid together in the same charting space, as well as featuring Symptom and Bleeding view screens.

The site is a really user-friendly resource for women at all stages in reproductive life – whether they have children already or are considering having them in the future, and continues to be a useful interactive experience during pregnancy. www.FertilityFlower.com

The LifeForce iPhone app

This app from counselling and coaching company LifeForce links the user to relevant resources if they are trying to conceive or going through a fertility treatment programme – information about treatments and where relevant, the cheapest fertility drugs.

The big draw is that it also includes individually targeted fertility consultations with Harley Street consultant Dr Laurence Shaw (an expert in reproductive medicine and surgery). Using detailed menu options on the screen a patient is taken through possible fertility problems before considering the need for ICI, IVF and finally egg or sperm surrogacy.

The LifeForce Fertility Programme also looks at possible psychological factors – this includes counsellor Jules Williams on video providing help to overcome underlying mental blocks. Stress can hamper fertility and this service could be a valuable additional service.

lifeforceteam.co.uk