GynoFiles

Many couples planning pregnancy come in with similar basic questions regarding pregnancy planning and sexuality for pregnancy planning. Here are some basic questions answered. 1.  Have sex, don't worry about exact position. You must have sex. New data says more sex is better and you have a 37% chance if you have sex every day when fertile, and only a 33% chance if you have sex every other day. Only home one day a week? those couples only have about a 15% chance of getting pregnant. All sex positions work for conception. Being in missionary position, having a pillow under your hips, and having orgasms have been talked about to lead to more often getting pregnant, but no medical studies back these pieces of advice up! 2. Enjoy your time cuddling or whatever you want to do after conception sex, no true evidence to the various exercises you need to put your hips through to encourage sperm to swim to their destination. Laying still after sex to enhance pregnancy also...

Pregnancy testing has come a long way in the past 100 years! But still women have questions about their home pregnancy test. Often it is confusing if that home pregnancy test just shows a very faint line. In fact that faint line is probably accurate, but perhaps you tried to test too soon. We all are a bit impatient, but remember that fertilized egg won't implant for a few days after conception No pregnancy test, no matter how accurate will , by itself will prove you have a healthy on going pregnancy. This is why repeat testing over several days has become popular. One hundred years ago, it really took 2-3 months to determine if you were pregnant. In Marianna Wheel's popular Harpers book of 1914 called Before the Baby Comes she cautioned that "cold and change of climate (among other things) can cause you to skip your period, but if not that, and you skip two successive menstrual periods [you] may be fairly positive of your condition [pregnant]!" But skip ahead...

At Women’s Health Practice we advocate a pregnancy planning visit, at which time women are screened for abnormal sugar tolerance as well as diabetes. Then if you conceive, the question is when to repeat the testing for diabetes. ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) and the ADA (American Diabetes Association) have been the two organizations weighing in on the standards that are used. The standard plan after a woman is pregnant to then test women at risk early in pregnancy, and then all women at their 28 week visit. A new guideline says doing testing mostly at 28 weeks misses as many as three quarters of all the gestational diabetes. A new guideline suggests that all pregnant women should be tested for diabetes at their first prenatal visit, unless they have already been diagnosed with the condition, according to a new clinicalpractice guideline from the Endocrine Society. Women who test abnormal on screening tests have been asked to to do further testing, l...

Lots of patients want to conceive a girl or a boy, or want girl twins, and I get asked regularly how to get this done! Can praying make it so? Can certain medications, sex during certain phases of the moon, or other techniques that only gynos know be able to set the stage?  Like other modern women, beliefs aside, we want to know facts. And the fact is that approximately only 1/100 pregnancies naturally are twins, and that about as many boys as girls are born. Yet there are slight statistical variations i nthe birthing rates of males and females in some ethnic groups and some countries. And I do tell patients that, yes, some sperm separating techniques do work... a bit. Fertility medications can tip the scale towards getting your twins that you hope for. And maybe you wish for twins, but they may be a difficult pregnancy as even Rebekah lamented in Genesis 25:22 when she said her children "struggled in the womb", (excellent gynos in those Biblical days, they ...

For pregnancy planning mothers or prenatal patients new guidelines on screening for fragile X disorders have been issued. Although it is only seen in about 1/4000 women, it is something that can be diagnosed in families, and then treatment alternatives can be evaluated.  If you have family history of various disorders including autism or premature ovarian insufficiency you are a candidate for genetic counseling and fragile X permutation carrier screening. It is important for women to know their family history of medical disorders so that you can evaluated trends that may signal hereditary problems. Call for appointment.

You should always plan your pregnancy, and there is a lot on line, such at the World Health Organization about how to conceive a healthy pregnancy, or at ACOG , or read about it at Mayoclinics online . And then when you are ready, most women are really ready to hurry up and conceive. Well if hot times in the summer make you more interested in sex, good news, you are more likely to conceive a healthy pregnancy in the summer! A study was made of the seasonal variation in all births, and births in Switzerland recorded between 1876 and 1990 at the Folkhalsan Institute of Genetics, Population Genetics Unit, Helsinki, Finland. Over the one hundred years studied some series of decades had more seasonal variations than others! They noted for instance that there was an increase seasonal variation for births was noted for the period 1876-1930, with strong seasonal variation holding for 1921-1980, then less seasonal variation after that!. Twin births showed a strong seasonality for the perio...