Describe the treatments available to help infertile couples to have children

Authors Avatar

A1) Describe the treatments available to help infertile couples to have children

Describe the treatments available to help infertile couples to have children

There are a variety of treatments available to help infertile couples to have children as infertility is increasingly becoming a recognised problem. Infertility is the term used to describe the inability to conceive or the inability to carry a pregnancy to a live child after regular sexual intercourse without the use of contraception. If you continue to have sexual intercourse without contraception for a year or more and still cannot have a child you are generally deemed infertile. Therefore if you are fertile you have the ability to have children of your own through sexual intercourse without contraceptives. The problems of infertility are now becoming greater as it affects over 10% of couples hoping to have children. One in ten of these cases of infertility are inexplicable which means that we can not explain why they are infertile because there is no apparent reason. When couples are told that one of them, or both, are infertile I imagine that this takes time to sink in and for them to acknowledge what this actually means. For most couples that were actually planning to have a child it would be very hard to take and they would be feeling distraught. One of the partners may feel slightly resentful to the partner who is infertile if it had been that important for them to have a child. The reason why people, particularly Christians, feel it is important to have children is that it is what God wanted and it completes the act of marriage. Without a child someone may feel less than a whole or complete person as if something in their life is missing and there is a gap left to be filled. A wife who was infertile described herself to be “A dud” maybe because it lowered her self-esteem that she could not give birth to a child. There are many types of problems that cause infertility that occur in both males and females. Males can suffer from a low sperm count, lazy sperm which are sperm that don’t fight to get to the egg and fertilise it, and they can be impotent meaning that they can’t get aroused during sex. Females may produce an insufficient number of eggs or have blocked fallopian tubes. All of these problems leading to infertility can easily be treated. Some couples want to have children so much that they turn to medical treatments that could possibly still enable them to have a child. Advances in medical technology can now help infertile couples become parents through the use of embryo technology. I will describe these treatments in my coursework: In vitro fertilization (IVF), Artificial insemination by husband, Artificial insemination by donor, egg/sperm donation, embryo donation and surrogacy.

Join now!

One of the most common forms of modern treatment to enable couples to be parents is (IVF) or In vitro fertilization. “In vitro” is Latin for “in glass” meaning the dish that the sperm and egg are fertilized in. The first case of IVF treatment was used in 1978 and the first “Test-tube baby” Louise Brown was born. Now almost 12 out of every 1000 babies are conceived this way, but it is a costly procedure. It normally costs over £3000 for this treatment, even though many claim there to be only a 50% chance of this treatment actually ...

This is a preview of the whole essay